No filmmaker more deserves the lavish treatment that the Criterion Collection recently bestowed on Ingmar Bergman. Created to honor the Swedish writer-director’s centenary, “Ingmar Bergman's Cinema” pairs 39 films on 30 Blu-ray discs (regrettably, there is no DVD edition) with a nearly 250-page coffee-table book featuring a series of essays by Bergman authorities along with excerpts from archival materials and a multitude of compelling photographs.
But the box is more than a compendium of movies gathered in an attractive vessel—or at least it purports to be. Conceived as a permanent “film festival”, it divides Bergman’s singular oeuvre into vague categories like Opening and Closing Nights, Centerpieces and Double Features. Whether that enriches a film lover’s appreciation of this master’s work is debatable, but it might prove a useful starting point for those in need of some guidance. After all, Bergman directed 45 feature films (and wrote even more) before he died at age 89 in 2007.
Bergman deserves his reputation among cineastes as a meticulous prober of life’s big questions and man’s inability to come to terms with most of them.
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