Aging Gracefully: Antonioni and Bergman

Posted by Myrna the Minx on July 31, 2007 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Oh my, Ingmar Bergman and Michaelangelo Antonioni both dead. Two film giants. What is there to say?

In college I took an Antonioni film class in college, and it was a wonderful experience for a young film lover. Watching “The Dreamers” took me back to my own heady days of amateur intellectual film worship. There are the obvious Antonioni films to admire (“L’Avventura,” “Blow-Up” (for which our photo feature is named), “Il Deserto Rosso,” and of course “The Passenger,”but I remember being particularly struck by his unintentionally short documentary “Gente del Po.” To me, he was the filmmaker who was best able to depict the existentialist dilemma of the self–the isolation, the longing, the starkness.

I saw my first Bergman movie far too young–it was “Fanny and Alexander.” Even at the age of 10, I couldn’t get enough of that two reel movie and watched the rental several times before it was returned to the video store. The fact alone probably tells you readers more about me than any other I will ever relate. I was a child with mature tastes to say the least, and that film experience spawned an obsession with movies that I will never lose. A skeptic of all things religious, Bergman knew how to portray the light of love better than any other director then and now. That’s the most amazing thing about film isn’t it? A director’s vision is preserved for all time so that Bjorn the Houseboy and I can watch them anytime we wish.

I think the last passage from the New York Times’ obituary of Antonioni probably reflects the sentiments of both men and is the perfect comment on their deaths:

One interviewer asked him to look back over his life. “In a world without film, what would you have made?” he was asked.

Mr. Antonioni replied: “Film.”