Watershed celebrates Bergman’s centenary
It’s a big happy birthday to Ingmar Bergman. Or it would be if the great Swedish filmmaker hadn’t carked it back in 2007. So put away that cake and bunting right now. This means, of course, that Bergman presumably now knows the answers to all those Big Questions about what happens after we die. If only he could tell us…
Anyhoo, had he lived Bergman would be 100 years old this July. And to celebrate, the Watershed is screening a selection of the great man’s films. These will need no introduction to seasoned cineastes, but the ‘shed is well aware that Bergman can be daunting to newcomers. That’s why film programmer and half-Swede Dr. Peter Walsh is pitching up on March 25 with an illustrated talk entitled Where to Begin with Bergman?
We thought we’d do our bit to show that, despite his forbidding reputation, Bergman’s oeuvre is remarkably diverse. To do this, we’ve carved his films up cheekily and, it must be said, somewhat arbitrarily into Cheery Bergman and Glum Bergman. If you were to arrange them on a spectrum you’d have the jolly Smiles of a Summer Night at one end and the bleak Cries & Whispers at the other. We’ve filed The Seventh Seal under Cheery Bergman because the one thing its earnest champions rarely mention is how much fun it is. Summer with Monika is a tricky one, because it starts out cheery and winds up glum. But it was the only Bergman film ever to be shown in US porn cinemas. Read our listing to find out why.
