tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post7665474825334363888..comments2023-06-14T08:58:35.243-04:00Comments on Jeff Strabone: the end of a centuryJeff Strabonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13381289400378450933noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-66841094905730222382007-09-26T20:02:00.000-04:002007-09-26T20:02:00.000-04:00My favorite Bergman film was "The Magician". Organ...My favorite Bergman film was "The Magician". Organized religion never took such a big hit.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-30276953356211603032007-08-03T22:13:00.000-04:002007-08-03T22:13:00.000-04:00Thanks. I have corrected the entry. Having seen th...Thanks. I have corrected the entry. Having seen the film innumerable times, I knew that. I don't know how I made that mistake.Jeff Strabonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13381289400378450933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-43535737277748105302007-08-03T18:07:00.000-04:002007-08-03T18:07:00.000-04:00that: "You might want to give him the heads up tha...that: "You might want to give him the heads up that Max Von Sydow didn't play the priest in Winter Light. He played the fisherman who kills himself. The priest was played by Gunnar Bjornstrand."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-39272610760345619242007-08-03T12:29:00.000-04:002007-08-03T12:29:00.000-04:00For those who don't know his work, I should point ...For those who don't know his work, I should point out that Asad is a lovely writer <A HREF="http://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/MondayMusings.html#asad" REL="nofollow">whose work</A> regularly appears at 3 Quarks Daily.<BR/><BR/>The generation of artists and audience members under consideration brought ennobling qualities to the consideration of contemporary culture, and such qualities are far too rare today. (I invite anyone who doubts it to recall how their eyebrow rose when they read the word 'ennobling' a sentence ago.)<BR/><BR/>Even so, I would not want to be accused of damning this generation as a fall from the grace of its predecessors. As I tried to point out, there are still great, younger artists alive today working in film and other media.<BR/><BR/>Asad's point about only the kids being left behind reminds me of a recurring discussion I have with another friend of mine. We regularly note how much younger older people are today. Fifty- and sixty-year-olds are still cool in ways that they never were in the past. They are more curious and tolerant, and the men are not assholes like the men before them. And we in our thirties are all the more so refusing to abandon the radiance of youth. (New York may exaggerate the effect.)<BR/><BR/>These are good things. Could they only have come at the price of killing off our capacity for seriousness? No. There has to be a way to retain, or revive, what was great about Bergman's generation while staying true to ours. This would be an apt moment to reflect on how we might do that.Jeff Strabonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13381289400378450933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-40749434182024411012007-08-03T09:50:00.000-04:002007-08-03T09:50:00.000-04:00Hey Jeff, nice work and thanks for writing this. ...Hey Jeff, nice work and thanks for writing this. I too am depressed that a certain cultural world that, to be honest, felt better and more real to me, continues to slide gradually away. Sometimes I have this feeling that all the real adults belonged to that generation and as they go, only kids and grown-up kids are left.Asadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04076333261632062851noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-43960084363712647432007-08-01T22:40:00.000-04:002007-08-01T22:40:00.000-04:00Here is the link to the Peter Bradshaw piece that ...Here is the link to the <A HREF="http://film.guardian.co.uk/bergman/story/0,,2138253,00.html" REL="nofollow">Peter Bradshaw piece</A> that Dan mentioned.<BR/><BR/>I was pleased to see that Bradshaw shares my preference for Winter Light. It is a great film too little known. Bradshaw is right on in saying that 'Bergman's death robs the cinema of an unapologetic high seriousness'. One sees the expulsion of seriousness equally on the screen and the stage. I am far from those curmudgeons who think the Age of Irony is the end of civilisation, but I don't know what we have gained by disallowing seriousness altogether in contemporary culture. Even older cultural objects are routinely ironized by audiences today. It is impossible to enjoy a screening of a Douglas Sirk film nowadays because the audience will laugh all the way through. His films were never funny, yet many twenty-first-century people somehow can't see that.<BR/><BR/>But I was disappointed, to say the least, that Bradshaw re-punched Woody Allen's ticket on his career-long free ride claiming Bergman's influence. Bradshaw—inadvertently, I hope—even reversed the order between them: he said that Winter Light 'is redolent of the tormented boyhood of Woody Allen's Alvy Singer in Annie Hall'. Bergman redolent of Allen?<BR/><BR/>And yes, I would indeed say that Bergman was the greatest living artist operating in any medium. In any other century, he would be recognized as a playwright of the first order. I don't know a more powerful body of modern dramatic writing than his screenplays. Yet because he wrote screenplays, his writing will never be studied and performed like that of Ibsen or Chekhov. On top of that, he also belonged to the first rank of movie directors, whether we think in terms of film style or of directing actors. And besides all that, he may have been the greatest theatrical director who ever lived, and I don't say that lightly. What a shame that so few people outside Sweden could see his work on the stage. And now it's all over. Everything ends.Jeff Strabonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13381289400378450933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7528812.post-29446438211996092802007-08-01T16:55:00.000-04:002007-08-01T16:55:00.000-04:00Antonioni's loss compounds the sense, very eloquen...Antonioni's loss compounds the sense, very eloquently expressed by you and by Peter Bradshaw here:<BR/><BR/>http://film.guardian.co.uk/bergman/story/ 0,,2138253,00.html<BR/><BR/>that the final bridge across a chasm has collapsed. But Bergman's death resounds even more profoundly than that, does it not? He had a serious claim to be the greatest living artist operating in any medium.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com