Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:31 pm
Here are some quotes from Ingmar Bergman on his views about other film-makers from the excellent Ingmar Bergman site.
Here is a link to the location of these quotes because they are a bit hard to find.
On Michelangelo Antonioni:
"He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau. In my collection I have a copy of Il Grido, and damn what a boring movie it is. So devilishly sad, I mean. You know, Antonioni never really learned the trade. He concentrated on single images, never realising that film is a rhythmic flow of images, a movement. Sure, there are brilliant moments in his films. But I don't feel anything for L'Avventura, for example. Only indifference. I never understood why Antonioni was so incredibly applauded. And I thought his muse Monica Vitti was a terrible actress." --Ingmar Bergman, 2002
On Jean-Luc Godard:
"I've never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He's made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin/Féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mindnumbingly boring."
On Orson Welles:
"For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of - is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable. Aghed: How about The Magnificent Ambersons? Bergman: Nah. Also terribly boring. And I've never liked Welles as an actor, because he's not really an actor. In Hollywood you have two categories, you talk about actors and personalities. Welles was an enormous personality, but when he plays Othello, everything goes down the drain, you see, that's when he's croaks. In my eyes he's an infinitely overrated filmmaker."
So what do you make of that then?
I actually find his dissenting opinions quite refreshing. Although I love the work of Jean-luc Godard I'm not too keen on Welles or Antonioni either (but I wouldn't go quite as far as Bergman).
The following is also on the site concerning Bergman's favourite films.
In connection to the 18th Göteborg Film Festival 1994, Bergman chose his eleven all time favourite films:
The Circus (Charles Chaplin, USA 1928)
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, France 1938)
The Conductor (Andrzej Wajda, Poland 1979)
Raven's End (Bo Widerberg, Sweden 1963)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer, France 1927)
The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, Sweden 1921)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, Japan 1951)
La Strada (Federico Fellini, Italy 1954)
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, USA 1950)
Two German Sisters (Margarethe von Trotta, BRD 1981)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union 1969)
Here is a link to the location of these quotes because they are a bit hard to find.
On Michelangelo Antonioni:
"He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau. In my collection I have a copy of Il Grido, and damn what a boring movie it is. So devilishly sad, I mean. You know, Antonioni never really learned the trade. He concentrated on single images, never realising that film is a rhythmic flow of images, a movement. Sure, there are brilliant moments in his films. But I don't feel anything for L'Avventura, for example. Only indifference. I never understood why Antonioni was so incredibly applauded. And I thought his muse Monica Vitti was a terrible actress." --Ingmar Bergman, 2002
On Jean-Luc Godard:
"I've never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He's made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin/Féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mindnumbingly boring."
On Orson Welles:
"For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of - is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable. Aghed: How about The Magnificent Ambersons? Bergman: Nah. Also terribly boring. And I've never liked Welles as an actor, because he's not really an actor. In Hollywood you have two categories, you talk about actors and personalities. Welles was an enormous personality, but when he plays Othello, everything goes down the drain, you see, that's when he's croaks. In my eyes he's an infinitely overrated filmmaker."
So what do you make of that then?
I actually find his dissenting opinions quite refreshing. Although I love the work of Jean-luc Godard I'm not too keen on Welles or Antonioni either (but I wouldn't go quite as far as Bergman).
The following is also on the site concerning Bergman's favourite films.
In connection to the 18th Göteborg Film Festival 1994, Bergman chose his eleven all time favourite films:
The Circus (Charles Chaplin, USA 1928)
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, France 1938)
The Conductor (Andrzej Wajda, Poland 1979)
Raven's End (Bo Widerberg, Sweden 1963)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer, France 1927)
The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, Sweden 1921)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, Japan 1951)
La Strada (Federico Fellini, Italy 1954)
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, USA 1950)
Two German Sisters (Margarethe von Trotta, BRD 1981)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, Soviet Union 1969)