To be honest, this has been a difficult post to put together. The watching and rewatching, the research, and the outlining have all been simultaneously joyous and filled with grief. I am of course only one of many in mourning the passing of our beloved Agnes Varda: the art/film world and those closer to her work have expressed Varda’s influence much greater than I (I have added links at bottom of page for a few particularly meaningful articles) but what I can say is that the world is certainly less since March 29th.
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On Having Something To Say
Francis Ford Coppola. Robert Altman. Milos Forman. Roman Polanski. Bernardo Bertolucci. Wim Wenders. Werner Herzog. Olivier Assayas. Vera Chytilova. Martin Scorsese. Steven Soderbergh. Leos Carax. Quentin Tarantino. Wes Anderson. These are just a handful of names who have been massively influenced by the work of the French New Wave--this band of revolutionary artists from the 50’s and 60’s. Scorsese himself expressed this when he stated that “the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not. It submerged cinema like a tidal wave.”
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A Monument to Humiliation
In The Hour of the Wolf (1968), Ingmar Bergman (with a debatably poignant cynicism) draws the viewer into the mad mind of artist Johan Borg (Max von Sydow). As with many Bergman films, the plot itself is fairly straightforward: Borg, with his pregnant wife Alma (Liv Ullmann), vacation on a remote Swedish island while he slowly loses his grip on reality.
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A Pinhole of Light
The next film in our “Communicating Bergman” series is his 1978 film, Autumn Sonata. Echoing back to his chamber films of the early 1960’s, this film takes place over a period of one night and consists almost entirely of performances in close up of the two powerhouses, Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann. These two devastatingly depict the fractured relationship between the famous concert pianist Charlotte (Bergman) and her oft-ignored daughter, Eva (Ullmann).
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Introduction to a Series: "Communicating Bergman"
The influence of Ingmar Bergman is pervasive. Though perhaps first praised internationally by many French critics and filmmakers--e.g. Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer--his influence soon reach other international giants such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, and Federico Fellini. Additionally, one can find the influence in American filmmakers such as David Lynch, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, and perhaps most explicitly Woody Allen.
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