There are lots of truly great filmmakers in cinema history. Great films have been made everywhere in the world in the last 115 years. But true masters who fundamentally influenced and changed cinema are but a few, relatively speaking. Of course it first started with the 'fathers'. The people who participated in the birth of cinema, and help build cinema from the foundation up in early 1900, like D.W. Griffith in the United States, Giovanni Pastrone in Italy. And then in the 1920s filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein in Russia, F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang in Germany, Alfred Hitchcock in England, Cecil B. DeMille and King Vidor in the United States. Then in the 30s cinema had surpassed it's 'birth' stage, and was starting to evolve; grow. The format, the language and technique of a film were set and familiar. We knew what 'a movie' was, so now let's make them better and better. The final essential evolution was sound. From this point on the form was ripe. That's when the true masters of cinema slowly started to appear.
Hitchcock is one of the most unique ones of the true masters, since he also was one of the fathers of cinema. He started in the mid 20s all the way up to 1976..! There are few to none other masters that can claim to have a number of classics in every decade from the 20s up to the 70s. But there are more, and even more interesting masters in cinema. People like Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard seem to be regarded as the greatest masters in general. Next to Kubrick, my favorite in this group is Ingmar Bergman.
The cinema of Ingmar Bergman consists of films about people... struggling. Bergman is famous - and infamous - for his so called 'depressive movies'. But, for me it's so obvious and essential that they're not depressive at all. They depict the darkest and bleakest themes and subjects, but Bergman films are often very hopeful in the end. Lots of characters in his films are depressed; or struggling with anxiety and fear, sure. But depression is never his main goal. Bergman depicts, disassembles, analyzes and explores the human psyche. The soul. Meaning. And always in/near the context of the greatest existential concepts and ideas. The meaning of life might be rooted in emptiness in his work, but it's what we as humans do with life and ourselves that creates the existence of beauty, love and spiritual connection (which is my personal vision as well). Bergman is masterful in creating the most beautiful moods ever made in cinema. His films sometimes feel like the wind; sometimes like a mirror burning with fire; sometimes like an angry clown. But he touches you, from deep within.
"Ansikte mot ansikte" (aka "Face to face") is a film about Jenny (played by Liv Ullman). Jenny is a psychiatrist who is confronted with one of her deeply disturbed but tragically endearing patients called Maria. A woman lost in an erotic spell of insanity and troubled thoughts. A mystery. As the film progresses Jenny slowly but surely seems to go in the same direction as the enigmatic Maria. We learn about her inner-demons and outher-troubles as she falls into the abyss of the human psyche. When she 'breaks' in the centre of the film, the film goes inwards - we experience her world of troubling thoughts and experiences in a beautifully confusing dreamlike innervision (think "Lost Highway" without the modern/pop element). In the end it all turns out to be...
This was the one Bergman film I had yet to see for a long time. Brilliant and beautiful!
Hitchcock is one of the most unique ones of the true masters, since he also was one of the fathers of cinema. He started in the mid 20s all the way up to 1976..! There are few to none other masters that can claim to have a number of classics in every decade from the 20s up to the 70s. But there are more, and even more interesting masters in cinema. People like Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard seem to be regarded as the greatest masters in general. Next to Kubrick, my favorite in this group is Ingmar Bergman.
The cinema of Ingmar Bergman consists of films about people... struggling. Bergman is famous - and infamous - for his so called 'depressive movies'. But, for me it's so obvious and essential that they're not depressive at all. They depict the darkest and bleakest themes and subjects, but Bergman films are often very hopeful in the end. Lots of characters in his films are depressed; or struggling with anxiety and fear, sure. But depression is never his main goal. Bergman depicts, disassembles, analyzes and explores the human psyche. The soul. Meaning. And always in/near the context of the greatest existential concepts and ideas. The meaning of life might be rooted in emptiness in his work, but it's what we as humans do with life and ourselves that creates the existence of beauty, love and spiritual connection (which is my personal vision as well). Bergman is masterful in creating the most beautiful moods ever made in cinema. His films sometimes feel like the wind; sometimes like a mirror burning with fire; sometimes like an angry clown. But he touches you, from deep within.
"Ansikte mot ansikte" (aka "Face to face") is a film about Jenny (played by Liv Ullman). Jenny is a psychiatrist who is confronted with one of her deeply disturbed but tragically endearing patients called Maria. A woman lost in an erotic spell of insanity and troubled thoughts. A mystery. As the film progresses Jenny slowly but surely seems to go in the same direction as the enigmatic Maria. We learn about her inner-demons and outher-troubles as she falls into the abyss of the human psyche. When she 'breaks' in the centre of the film, the film goes inwards - we experience her world of troubling thoughts and experiences in a beautifully confusing dreamlike innervision (think "Lost Highway" without the modern/pop element). In the end it all turns out to be...
This was the one Bergman film I had yet to see for a long time. Brilliant and beautiful!