Of the veritable elements of Bergman?s cinema, Liv Ullman alone survives today. The other three that reified his oeuvre?cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Medieval Christian metaphysics, and Bergman himself?are no more. In Ernst Ingmar Bergman?s passing on July 30, the world lost one of its last links with the golden days of European cinema. In less than 24 hours after his death in the Swedish countryside, another filmmaker who belonged to the departing generation that fashioned film?s worth as a fine art, Michelangelo Antonioni, passed away aged 94.
Both the filmmakers authored classics that became textbooks in film institutes. Yet, they were too dissimilar to be compared. ?Bergman dealt with the darker side of human psyche while Antonioni focussed on the medium of cinema itself, or its aesthetics. Both are important in their own ways,? noted filmmaker Govind Nihalani told FE . Bergman was in essence a direct descendant of Renaissance Christian art, though he preferred to be called an agnostic. He was the child of Luther and the brother of Rafael. In Seventh Seal , voted one of the greatest-ever films by Sight & Sound, a knight returning from the Crusades, played by Max von Sydow, plays chess with Death, with his life as the stake. Bergman?s themes pivoted on human being?s personal relation with God, a Protestant doctrine which distinguishes that faith from other Christian sects like the Catholic or Orthodox Church. His father, a Lutheran minister who became chaplain to the Swedish king, used to cane and humiliate the sickly boy. Critics say Bergman exorcised his tormented childhood through the religious themes of guilt and punishment in his films. ?I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage,?? Bergman said in a rare interview in 2001.
Bergman shot to international fame in 1956 when Smiles won a special prize at the Cannes film festival. But he partly abandoned metaphysics and embraced the theme of human psychology in the 1966 Persona . ?The best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women,? says French director Bertrand Tavernier. Bergman often had highly publicised relations with his lead actresses. He was married five times to gorgeous and gifted women that included a dancer, a director and a pianist.
Bergman mostly focussed on two main themes: the relationship between the sexes, and the relationship between man and God. Antonioni, in contrast, was more contemporaneous and dealt with the fragmented human existence ravaged by World War II. Antonioni was a lone figure in filmdom. He thematically explored the ?alienation? of the bourgeoisie in post-war Italy while Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini produced working-class homilies. He was the least Italianate of all Italian filmmakers. He made only 20 movies, the first feature Cronaca di un amore at the age of 38. The ethos of his films stood out in sharp relief from the world of Fellini, De Seca, Passolini and Bertolucci. He was influential on many a filmmaker. With his 1960 L?Avventur a he became and icon for filmmakers like Martin Scorsese. In India, ?We we see an echo of Antonioni in Kumar Sahni, especially in his colour scheme. In Tarang , this is very explicit,? said film theorist Amrit Gangar. If Antonioni is to be remembered tomorrow, it will be for only one thing: Film. Asked what he would have made in a world without film, he once said: ?Film?.
Despite sharp dissimilitude, Bergman and Antonioni helped formulate the grammar of film. ?Bergman and Antonioni provided plasticity to film as art,? Gangar said.