6-Winter Light. Director: Ingmar Bergman. Cast:Gunnar Björnstrand,Ingrid Thulin,Max Von Sydow and Gunnel Lindblom.

"no other director has done more with the human face"

-Roger Ebert-

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"One of the most important figures of the modern cinema, this phenomenally talented artist, through a series of films dating back to the 1940s, practically created and defined his own genre. Noted for pictures that probe the inner reaches of human emotion, Bergman has served as a model for generations of filmmakers around the world. His primary concerns are spiritual conflict and the fragility of the psyche; within these frameworks, he has crafted a body of work celebrated for its technical and textual innovation. Bergman's interest in life's enduring questions was undoubtedly fueled by a strict Lutheran upbringing (his father was chap lain to the Swedish royal family). As a child, Bergman displayed an active imagination and a love for the theater, which was also manifested during his training as an actor and director at the University of Stockholm."

-Leonard Maltin-

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"On one level there are the general run of filmmakers who supply the public with good, solid entertainment year after year. Above them are the artists who make films that are deeper, more personal, more original, more exciting. And finally, above them all, there's Ingmar Bergman, who is probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera."

-Woody Allen-

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"Here is a difference between me and Bergman: for me God is not a mute. I totally disagree with those who claim an aura of films by the Swedish director is present in The Sacrifice. When Bergman speaks of God, he does it in the context of God who is silent, who is not with us. So we have nothing in common, just the opposite. Some of the superficial remarks were made because the actor in the main role had also worked with Bergman or because of the traces of Swedish landscape in my film. People making such claims have not understood anything in Bergman, they don't know what existentialism is. Bergman is closer to Kierkegaard than to problems of religion."

-Andrei Tarkovsky-

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"I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is 'Winter Light'. That is my only picture about which I feel that I have started here and ended there and that everything along the way has obeyed me. Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture. I couldn't make this picture today....but I saw it a few weeks ago together with a friend and I was very satisfied."

-Ingmar Bergman-

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"The shooting was extremely demanding, and dragged on for fifty-six days. It was one of the longest schedules I've had, and one of the shortest films I've ever made. For one thing, Gunnar Bjornstrand was ill all the time. That autumn, or in the summer I think it was, he'd had severe heart trouble and was in personal difficulties. Besides which he detested the role. The part really isn't a glamorous one, and he had a hell of a time; was forced to use other means of expression than he was used to. Throughout the filming Ingrid Thulin was a tower of strength. The role appealed to her; but she was a moral support, too. So was Gunnar, with his professionalism—always ready, at every moment. But it was a heavy job. I showed the film to my wife at that time [Kabi Laretei], and she said: 'Yes, Ingmar, it's a masterpiece; but it's a dreary masterpiece.' There's some truth in that; but the importance of the dreary in art mustn't be underestimated.

-Ingmar Bergman-

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"Working in this profession of butchers and whores, you develop this great need to please people. You keep wishing your movies will be successful, that this strenuous effort you put into making a film...this Sisyphean task—you want people to approve of it, and you want houses to be sold out. Well, I was a bit tormented by all that. I felt I was being ingratiating. And so I thought to myself, 'I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to worry about being ingratiating. I will write strictly about the problems that occupy me. Not for a moment, not for a minute, do I want the story to be ingratiating. I'll tell the story exactly and precisely the way I envisioned it.' We maintained this very strict form. Which meant that all the light...would be this grayish, shadowless light. November light. Sven and I went up to Dalarna, to a church in Skattungbyn, where we sat from morning till night taking notes. Sven took pictures the whole time of how the light moved through the church. He then invented something that had never existed before, a kind of lamp that could provide a shadowless light. I'm very fond of this movie. I think in a way this is the movie that is closest to me. Because for once I made a film that I consider a brave film."

-Ingmar Bergman-

5-L'Avventura. Director:Michelangelo Antonioni. Cast: Monica Vitti,Gabriele Ferzetti and Lea Massari



"In the early 60's there was a great debate.People took sides...-passionately-.On one side there was La Dolce Vita.On the other side was Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura.Two completely unique visions of the world,that couldn't have been more different.Where La Dolce Vita was a big sprawling circus of a movie,L'Avventura was mysterious,distanced.And where Fellini's movie was all-embracing and instantly accessible,Antonioni's was initially quite puzzling and hard to decipher.L'Avventura needed to be experienced and absorbed differently from other movies.The first time I saw the Film I was intrigued.What was I not seeing?So I went to see it again...and then again.I suppose you could say that it cast a spell on the viewer.It certainly did on me.And the more I saw it,the more L'Avventura became a powerful,emotional experience.Now,first of all L'Avventura depicted a world that was very far from my own.A world of whealthy people with time on their hands.And all the time and money was nothing but a trap.A trap that they couldn't get out of.So,in a way,you felt for these people because they were yearning to escape from their own lives.And then there was the way Antonioni used the frame,so carefully and precisely.He had a way of focusing your attention on the landscapes,or the spaces around the people...echoing their sense of isolation and loss.And the way he used black & white was also something new.Everything on the frame was crisp,visually defined...and this was another important element that helped to express the emotional lack in the lives of these characters.And Antonioni did something incredibly bold.He introduced a woman named Anna,played by Lea Massari,who seemed to be the heroine of the film.And then,during a island stopover...he suddenly had her disappear...from her friends...and actually,from the rest of the film.That was astonishing.It was unthinkable.Hitchcock did something similar with Janet Leigh in "PSYCHO" the same year,but unlike Hitchcock,Antonioni never bothered to explain what happened to Anna."

-Martin Scorsese-My Voyage to Italy ~
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Michelangelo Antonioni and Jack Nicholson

3-CASABLANCA.Director:Michael Curtiz. Cast:Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid,Peter Lorre and Claude Rains.









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4-2001-Space Odyssey.Director:Stanley Kubrick. Cast: Apes and HAL 9000


Stanley Kubrick's list of Favorite Films (circa 1963)

1-I Vitelloni -Federico Fellini
2-Wild Strawberries-Ingmar Bergman
3-Citizen Kane-Orson Welles
4-The Treasure of the Sierra Madre-John Huston
5-City Lights-Charles Chaplin
6-Henry V-Laurence Olivier
7-La Notte-Michelangelo Antonioni
8-The Bank Dick-Edward F. Cline / W.C. Fields
9-Roxie Hart-William A. Wellman
10-Hell's Angels-Howard Hughes/Edmund Goulding

Later he added
E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial-Steven Spielberg
Eraserhead-David Lynch
Modern Romance-I honestly don't know which one he was talking about....
La Ronde-Max Ophüls
The Decalogue-Krzysztof Kieslowski




"A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later."
-Stanley Kubrick-
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"How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001."
-Stanley Kubrick-

1-The Passion of Joan of Arc-Director:Carl Theodor Dreyer - Cast:Maria Renée Falconetti.



"Those who have the opportunity of seeing Carl Dreyer's masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc are actually seeing a print made from the original negatives. They were thought to have been destroyed but were miraculously discovered among the out takes of sound film at Gaumont Studios. There is perhaps no other film in which the actual quality of the photography is more important.


The Passion of Joan of Arc was filmed in France in 1928 by the Danish director Carl Dreyer, using French writers and a French crew. Based on a script by Joseph Delteil, the film is in fact inspired by the actual minutes of the trial. But the action here is condensed into one day, conforming to a dramatic requirement that is in no way a distortion.



Dreyer's Joan of Arc will remain memorable in film annals for its bold photography. With the exception of a few shots, the film is almost entirely composed of close-ups, principally of faces. This technique satisfies two apparently contradictory purposes: mysticism and realism. The story of Joan, as Dreyer presents it, is stripped of any anecdotal references. It becomes a pure combat of souls. But this exclusively spiritual tragedy, in which all action comes from within, is fully expressed by the face, a privileged area of communication.



I must explain this further. The actor normally uses his face to express his feelings. Dreyer, however, demanded something more of his actors—more than acting. Seen from very close up, the actor's mask cracks. As the Hungarian critic Béla Balasz wrote, "The camera penetrates every layer of the physiognomy. In addition to the expression one wears, the camera reveals one's true face. Seen from so close up, the human face becomes the document." Herein lies the rich paradox and inexhaustible lesson of this film: that the extreme spiritual purification is freed through the scrupulous realism of the camera as microscope. Dreyer forbade all makeup. The monks' heads are literally shaved. With the film crew in tears, the executioner actually cut Falconetti's hair before leading her to the stake. But this was not an example of real tyranny. We are indebted to Dreyer for his irrefutable translation direct from the soul. Silvain's wart (Cauchon), Jean d'Yd's freckles, and Maurice Schutz's wrinkles are of the same substance as their souls. These things signify more than their acting does. Some twenty years later Bresson resubstantiated this in Diary of a Country Priest (1950).



But there is still so much more to say about this film, one of the truest masterpieces of the cinema. I would like to enumerate two more points. First, Dreyer is perhaps, along with Eisenstein, the only filmmaker whose works equal the dignity, nobility, and powerful elegance found in masterpieces of painting. This is not only because he was inspired by them but essentially because he rediscovered the secret of comparable aesthetic depths. There is no reason to harbor false modesty with respect to films. A Dreyer is the equal of the great painters of the Italian Renaissance or Flemish school. My second observation is that all this film lacks is words. The only thing that has aged is the intrusion of subtitles. Dreyer so regretted not being able to use the still frail sound available in 1928. For those who still think that the cinema lowered itself when it began to have sound, we need only counter with this masterpiece of silent film that is already virtually speaking.
-Andre Bazin-
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""The virgin of Orleans and those matters that surrounded her death began to interest me when the shepherd girl’s canonization in 1920* once again drew the attention of the public-at-large to the events and actions involving her—and not only in France. In addition to Bernard Shaw’s ironical play, Anatole France’s learned thesis aroused great interest, too. The more familiar I became with the historical material, the more anxious I became to attempt to re-create the most important periods of the virgin’s life in the form of a film.



Even beforehand, I was aware that this project made specific demands. Handling the theme on the level of a costume film would probably have permitted a portrayal of the cultural epoch of the fifteenth century, but would have merely resulted in a comparison with other epochs. What counted was getting the spectator absorbed in the past; the means were multifarious and new.



A thorough study of the documents from the rehabilitation process was necessary; I did not study the clothes of the time, and things like that. The year of the event seemed as inessential to me as its distance from the present. I wanted to interpret a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life. What streams out to the possibly moved spectator in strange close-ups is not accidentally chosen. All these pictures express the character of the person they show and the spirit of that time. In order to give the truth, I dispensed with “beautification.” My actors were not allowed to touch makeup and powder puffs. I also broke with the traditions of constructing a set. Right from the beginning of shooting, I let the scene architects build all the sets and make all the other preparations, and from the first to the last scene everything was shot in the right order. Rudolf Maté, who manned the camera, understood the demands of psychological drama in the close-ups and he gave me what I wanted, my feeling and my thought: realized mysticism.


But in Falconetti, who plays Joan, I found what I might, with very bold expression, allow myself to call “the martyr’s reincarnation.” "
-Carl Theodor Dreyer-
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2- 8 1/2 . Director:Federico Fellini - Cast:Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée and Sandra Milo.



"I wish that every young person with an interest in film could've had the same experience that I had back in those days...To be young,open to everything,and to walk into the theater and have your expectations not just met...But surpassed time and time again. We all had one film that was a turning point,a personal touchstone...and I suppose that Fellini's 8 1/2 was mine. There was no turning back for Fellini after La Dolce Vita,but it turned out that La Dolce Vita was only the calm before the storm. With 8 1/2 he took a giant step forward. He reinvented himself,and in so doing...He reinvented what we all knew as Cinema. Now,you make a movie like La Dolce Vita that takes the world by storm and then what?Everybody's is waiting to see what you're going to do next,hanging on your every word,wondering what will be the next step in your artistic evolution. And everybody feels like they know you...like they understand you,like they own you...because you "thouched" them. In a word--Pressure. Pressure from your public and fans. Pressure from your critics and your enemies. Pressure from your producer because the clock is ticking and that means money...And more than anything else ,pressure from yourself. So Fellini did something unprecedent in movies...He made a film about his own artistic dilemma."
-Martin Scorsese-My Voyage to Italy ~

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"Fellini—I met him recently in Rome—that is to say I said "How do you do." He pulled me by the nose and kissed me on the cheek. He asked why I looked at him all the time. I replied that I had to see what the man who made the film, which I love almost most of all, looks like. I can't explain what it is that makes 8½ so wonderful or how he was able to make such a film. All that I can say is that I weep in my heart when I see it. Think of the ending when everything starts to move, everyone dances around the manège. Then I feel as if I would like to jump into the screen and take part and I think "Oh God, what a wonderful profession we actors have!"

-Harriet Andersson-