Art house directors are like, so hot right now.

<—-I can’t really back up the title of this post, but it popped into my head and I thought it might be amusing.

ANYWAY.

I took an art house cinema course this past semester and it revived my love for foreign cinema from the masters.  Not that my love was dying or anything, but it definitely needed a kick in the pants to restart it again.

Before this class I had never actually seen an Ingmar Bergman film.  Wait, that’s not true.  I saw about half an hour of Fanny and Alexander.  Whoops.  I think it takes a lot more than just seeing one isolated film though, to “get” Bergman.  I don’t really think it’s always possible to “get” any one the art house greats, since one of the chief characteristics of a lot of art house cinema is that it is incredibly challenging and often confusing.  Take Persona.  I’ve read a bunch of articles on it thanks to that class, heard various interpretations of what it’s supposed to be about, and I think no matter how many times I see it, I’ll still come out of it thinking, wtf was that part with the blood-sucking all about?  That’s okay though.  It’s still a fascinating experience.  Plus, Bergman is a HUGE influence on a lot of directors.  I was watching Woody Allen’s Love and Death the other day, and I have always been aware that he’s referencing a lot of Russian literature in it, but it gave me a special thrill to be able to pick out the specific filmic quotations of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Bergman’s Persona.

Love and Death's take on Persona's most famous of shots

Some of the most influential cinematography EVER

And let’s not forget that death is an actual character in Woody Allen’s Love and Death.  Seventh Seal, anyone?

Death wears white after Labor Day.

But back to Persona- personally, I think Liv Ullman is very interesting looking and it’s obvious that Bergman is obsessed with his two characters’ faces- he even fuses them together at one point.

Look carefully.

Art house cinephilia is definitely an exclusive club, complete with its own snobs and elitists.  I like to think that I’m neither of those, but there is a definite thrill that comes with being able to pick out references of influential, obscure (to some anyway) films from international filmmakers.  I hear that yet another of Allen’s films, titled Another Woman, is an extended take off on the Bergman film Wild Strawberries, an engaging look at a crotchety old man’s daylong roadtrip, during which he takes inventory of his life, mistakes, and relationships.  Amusingly enough, the main character of this film has the initials IB, so Ingmar Bergman basically aligned this crotchety old man character with himself by sharing his initials with him.

That’s all the thoughts I have for you today.  But before I go, here are some cool and very old school movie posters I found along the way in my searching for good photos from Bergman’s films.  There’s a bunch more posters on the BFI website in the same style and they’re all really cool.

God, I love love love Badlands. And it's an extended take-off of Bonnie and Clyde, just fyi.