44-The Seventh Seal - Director:Ingmar Bergman. Cast: Max von Sydow,Bibi Andersson,Bengt Ekerot,Gunnar Björnstrand,Nils Poppe and Gunnel Lindblom.

"It seems to me presumptuous to try to write or say anything about Ingmar Bergman, and any account is an impertinence; these films stand alone like great beacons in film history. There is nothing one would welcome so much as their liberation from all commentaries, all the ballast of the history of their interpretation; let them shine out once more! It seems to me that there is no other contemporary director whose work is so frequently filtered through the murky windows of "opinion"; there are no other films as deserving of simply being seen without being pre-analyzed as those of Ingmar Bergman... ... "
-Wim Wenders-
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"I don't regard Bergman as a religious film-maker. I think he's an atheist and he's saying there's nothing beyond this life. But that doesn't stop him from being spiritual and humanist."
-Terence Davies-
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"The director with the greatest power in the world is Bergman, because he makes his films with few people, and he makes them with few sets. But read Bergman on Bergman and see how even he has to practically crawl to someone in Stockholm and say, 'What about this project? I want to make this project. I'll make you two comedies after I do that. Will that make it all right?

Every film is a piece of his autobiography. That's what I like about his work. It's oblique and subtle and personally seen; you can't quite put your finger on it, but it's a piece of him. He's a true artist."
-Elia Kazan-
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"I can identify with what Bergman says about life, about what he says about love. I identify more or less with his attitude toward the world...towards men and women and what we do in everyday life...forgetting about what is most important."
-Krzysztof Kieslowski-
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"Consider the cleanness of his images. Some filmmakers allow pure chance to enter into their images. The sun, passersby, a bicycle (filmmakers like Rossellini, Lelouch, and Huston) and others want to control every square inch of the screen (Eisenstein, Lang, and Hitchcock). Bergman started out like the first group and then changed camps. In his latest films you never see a chance pedestrian; your attention will never be distracted by an extra object in the setting, even a bird in the garden. There is nothing on the canvas except what Bergman (who's anti-pictorial, like all true filmmakers) wants there."
-Francois Truffaut-
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"I have always admired him, and I wish I could be a equally good filmaker as he is, but it will never happen. His love for the cinema almost gives me a guilty conscience."
-Steven Spielberg-
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Ingmar Bergman favorite films (not in order):

The Passion of Joan of Arc - Carl Theodor Dreyer
Andrei Rublev - Andrei Tarkovsky
The Phantom Carriage - Victor Sjostrom
Dark Eyes - Nikita Mikhalkov
Bang! - Jan Troell
The Emigrants - Jan Troell
Great Expectations - David Lean
Hamsun - Jan Troell
Mr. Hulot's Holiday - Jacques Tati
The Phantom of Moulin Rouge - Rene Clair
Sunrise - F.W. Murnau
Tabu - F.W. Murnau
Tous les matins du monde -- Alain Corneau

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"There's an enigmatic relationship between Max and myself. He has meant a tremendous amount to me....As an actor, Max is sound through and through. Robust. Technically durable. If I'd had a psychopath to present these deeply psychopathic roles, it would have been unbearable. It's a question of acting the part of a broken man, not of being him. The sort of exhibitionism in this respect which is all the rage just now will pass over, I think. By and by people will regain their feeling for the subtle detachment which often exists between Max and my madmen."
-Ingmar Bergman-
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"I don't think they (Bergman's roles) were written for me as a personality. Many of his characters through the years have been related: there are those who want to believe but cannot, and there are those who believe like children and it's no problem for them at all, and there are those who do not want to believe, and there are the strains between these various characters and their conflicts, which are all probably conflicts within Ingmar himself."
-Max von Sydow-
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"I admire people like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Spencer Tracy, who seem to be so very real—I don't know how they do it. When I was young I admired Leslie Howard enormously, in films like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Gone With the Wind, and Pygmalion. Also Gary Cooper; perhaps he was not a great actor, but he had a great presence."
-Max von Sydow-
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"You have to get more involved in a Bergman film than you do in others, because it deals with much deeper and more philosophic questions than the average movie. He also establishes a much closer relationship with his actors and technicians than would ever be possible on larger productions."
-Max von Sydow-

43-The Exterminating Angel. Director:Luis Bunuel. Cast: Jacqueline Andere,Jose Baviera,Augusto Benedico,Luis Beristain and Silvia Pinal.

"If someone were to prove to me -- right this minute -- that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior."

-Luis Bunuel-

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"If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance,to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives,then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence"

-Luis Bunuel-

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"Freud opened a marvellous window into man's interior,but Freudian interpretation has been converted into a religion with answers for everything "

-Luis Bunuel-

42-Nights of Cabiria. Director:Federico Fellini - Cast:Giulietta Masina,François Périer,Franca Marzi,Dorian Gray and Amedeo Nazzari.

"The subject of loneliness and the observation of the isolated person has always interested me. Even as a child, I couldn’t help but notice those who didn’t fit in for one reason or another—myself included. In life, and for my films, I have always been interested in the out-of-step. Curiously, it’s usually those who are either too smart or those who are too stupid who are left out. The difference is, the smart ones often isolate themselves, while the less intelligent ones are usually isolated by the others. In Nights of Cabiria, I explore the pride of one of those who has been excluded.

... ...If there was any influence on me, it was Chaplin’s City Lights, one of my favorite films. Giulietta’s portrayal of Cabiria reminds me, as it has many people, of Chaplin’s tramp, even more so than her Gelsomina. Her exaggerated dance in the nightclub is reminiscent of Chaplin, and her encounter with the movie star is similar to that of the tramp’s encounter with the millionaire, who recognizes Charlie only when he’s drunk. I leave Cabiria looking at the camera with a glimmer of new hope at the end, just as Chaplin does with his tramp in City Lights. It is possible for Cabiria to yet again have hope because she is so basically optimistic, and her expectations are so low. The French critics referred to her as the feminine Charlot, their affectionate name for Chaplin. That made her very happy when she heard it. I was happy, too.

I understand that the term auteur to describe a cinema director was first used in talking about me, by the French critic André Bazin in a review of Cabiria. The American Broadway musical comedy and Hollywood picture Sweet Charity was inspired by Nights of Cabiria, and my name is on the credits, but I disagreed with Bob Fosse’s way of doing it on so many points, I prefer that the film be regarded as his creation.

The positive nature of Cabiria is so noble and wonderful. Cabiria offers herself to the lowest bidder and hears truth in lies. Though she is a prostitute, her basic instinct is to search for happiness as best she can, as one who has not been dealt a good hand. She wants to change, but she has been typecast in life as a loser. Yet she is a loser who always goes on to look again for some happiness.

Cabiria is a victim, and any of us can be a victim at one time or another. Cabiria is, however, more of a victim personality than most. Yet even so, there is also the survivor in her. This film doesn’t have a resolution in the sense that there is a final scene in which the story reaches a conclusion so definitive that you no longer have to worry about Cabiria. I myself have worried about her fate ever since."

-Federico Fellini-
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"Of all his characters, Fellini once said, Cabiria was the only one he was still worried about. In 1992, when Fellini was given an honorary career Oscar, he looked down from the podium to Masina sitting in the front row and told her not to cry. The camera cut to her face, showing her smiling bravely through her tears, and there was Cabiria."

-Roger Ebert-

41-The Searchers - Director:John Ford. -Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, and Natalie Wood.

"You can have a weak, utterly bad script--and a good cast will turn it into a good picture. I've thwarted more than one handicap of that kind with the aid of two or three really fine actors."

-John Ford-

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"How can I hate John Wayne upholding [Barry] Goldwater and yet love him tenderly when abruptly he takes Natalie Wood into his arms in the last reel of The Searchers?"

-Jean-Luc Godard-

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"I've always thought [Wayne is] underrated as an actor. I think The Searchers is one of the most marvelous performances of all time."

-James Stewart-

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"(John Ford is)... the greatest poet the cinema has given us"

-Orson Welles-

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"Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West--the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it."

-John Wayne-

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"Good Westerns are liked by everyone. Since humans are weak, they want to see good people and great heroes. Westerns have been done over and over again, and in the process a kind of grammar has evolved. I have learned much from this grammar of the Western."

-Akira Kurosawa (who much admired John Ford;probably his favorite director)-

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"John Wayne represents more force, more power, than anybody else on the screen"

-Howard Hawks-

40-Viaggio in Italia - Director:Roberto Rossellini. Cast: Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders.

"It's a film that moved me tremendously when I first saw it.But I often ask myself why I find it so moving.Because "Voyage to Italy" works very different from other movies.You don't really get the impression of "acting" when you're watching the film.Most of the time,it feels like you're watching a real-life married couple.

It's hard to convey the emotional pull at the end of this picture.Because in order to experience it, you really have to see the whole movie and absorb it."Voyage to Italy",unfortunately was a disaster when it first came out in Italy in 1953.For many people the end of Rossellini as a Director.But ultimately it had a profound effect in film History because the people who finally did appreciate were the critics from the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.Who would later become the directors of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and 60s.Jean-Luc Godard,François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer,Claude Chabrol,Jacques Rivette and their mentor Andre Bazin,one of the first critics anywhere to recognize Rossellini's greatness.For them,"Voyage to Italy"wasn't just great,it was revolutionary...the beggining of something new in movies.It helped to inspire a whole new kind of filmmaking.Improvisational,almost experimental.Unencumbered by trappings of studio filmmaking.As Godard once put it...-"Rossellini proved that all you really needed to make a movie was two people in a car, and a camera"

After "Voyage" there was no turning back for Rossellini.He made one or two more films with conventional stories but his heart didn't seem to be in it.For all intents and purposes he abandoned traditional narrative altogether.It's remarkable that this was a movie that wasn't just unpopular,it was actually reviled when it came out.But in the end "Voyage to italy" was so inspiring to the people who responded to it,that it wound up having just as powerful an effect on the History of Cinema as many better-know films.And ultimately it paved the way to the Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni."

-Martin Scorsese- My Voyage to Italy ~


"(Viaggio in Italia) opens a breach(which) all Cinema,on pain of death,must pass through"
-Jacques Rivette-


"Death doesn't exist here.Because it's a living thing in Italy.It's a different kind of civilization.There's a different meaning to things here."
-Roberto Rossellini-

39-Annie Hall. Director: Woody Allen . Cast: Diane Keaton and Woody Allen.

"I could get bad news and still sit downat the typewriter.Maybe it's because I'm depressed so often that I'm drawn to writers like Kafka and Dostoevski and to a filmmaker like Ingmar Bergman."
-Woody Allen-

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"It's not me, just as Charlie Chaplin wasn't The Tramp. Annie Hall isn't my relationship with Diane Keaton: we didn't get together like that, and we didn't split up like that. In fact, I co-wrote that film with Marshall Brickman and many of the observations were his. I had it with Deconstructing Harry, too. People said, "Now that's Woody." Well, it's not. I've never had writer's block, I don't go home and drink and I certainly don't have the courage to kidnap a child! I'm a drone. I sit and I work…"

-Woody Allen-

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38-Stromboli,terra di Dio. -Director:Roberto Rossellini. Cast:Ingrid Bergman ,Mario Vitale and Renzo Cesana.

"Stromboli was the first Italian film I ever saw on a big screen.Even at the age of seven I could feel the scandalous air around the movie.Rossellini and his star Ingrid Bergman, had had an affair and a child out of wedlock.Now,today,it doesn't seem like a very big thing but it was back then.They were condemned throughout America.And not just by the church this time,they were actually condemned on the floor of the American Senate.

Rossellini once described Karin (Ingrid Bergman) like this:
"A woman has undergone the trials of war.She comes out of it bruised and hardened no longer knowing what a human feeling is"

Rossellini once said that the most important thing was to find out if this woman could still cry.But it's more than that.Here's a woman who's undergone a series of horrible trials and who now has a baby growing inside of her.And at the edge of the volcano,she wakes up to a new spiritual reality.It doesn't matter whether or not she goes back to her husband...This is a film about her journey.A journey that many of us may have gone through at different times in our lives.Suffering,acceptance,transcendence,and finally peace."
-Martin Scorsese- My Voyage to Italy ~
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Isabella Rossellini and her mother(Ingrid Bergman)

"May 1948

Dear Mr.Rossellini,

I have seen your films Rome Open City and Paisan and I enjoyed them very much.If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well,has not forgotten her German,is barely comprehensible in French,and who can only say "I love you" in Italian,I am ready to come to Italy to work with you.

Ingrid Bergman."

37- Rear Window - Director:Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: James Stewart,Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey and Thelma Ritter.


"The set had to be pre-lit because it was such a tremendous job. We had 31 apartments, 12 of them fully furnished. The people moving around in them had microphones on, which you couldn't see at that distance, through which they received instructions."

-Alfred Hitchcock-
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"My Favorite Hitchcock picture,which I think is the quintessential Hitchcock film is 'Rear Window'.He was very voyeuristic with his camera"
- Steven Spielberg -
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"It shows every kind of human behavior. ... What you see across the way is a group of little stories that ... mirror a small universe."
-Alfred Hitchcock-
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"all of the stories have a common denominator in that they involve some aspect of love. James Stewart's problem is that he doesn't want to marry Grace Kelly. Everything he sees across the way has a bearing on love and marriage."
-Francois Truffaut-
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"I suppose Rear Window(is my favorite)... Working with Hitchcock is just a joy and it's something special. I would say that John Ford, Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock are the giants of the crowd. I think Rear Window is probably my favourite.

He was so clever in his use of the camera to give movement to a completely static thing. That hasn't happened very often. This has been disastrous for a lot of people with less talent than Hitchcock."
-James Stewart-