This past week alone we’ve lost two such masters: Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007) and Michelangelo Antonioni (1912 – 2007). Both these filmmakers have such a large catalog of classics, that it’s simply impossible to highlight their careers properly in anything under a novel. Ingmar Bergman’s career started in the middle of the 1940s and went straight through the mid 2000s. His most notable film, thanks to Film and Cinema Studies everywhere, is “The Seventh Seal” (1957). The film follows a man during the time of the great plague as he questions the Grim Reaper about life, death, and the purpose of it all. These sorts of themes resonated throughout his work. “Wild Strawberries” (also from 1957) deals with an aged professor realizing what his life is worth. It was a sort of sad meditation on how important we are in the grand scheme of things.
It seems like we’ve lost all of our filmmaking masters. This week was a painful reminder of how little of them remain. Read more tales of respect and mourning at the Film Threat Blog and Film Threat’s Back Talk»>
