Legendary Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Dies at 89

Legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, whose films and stage productions brought him wide international acclaim for over half a century, has died at the age of 89, according to a Yahoo! News report.  He passed away in his home in Faro, Sweden.

"Through more than 50 films, Bergman's vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years...Bergman, who approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, became one of the towering figures of serious filmmaking," states the article.  His most famous films included the metaphysical drama The Seventh Seal, with its famous chess match between a knight and Death, the surreal psychological drama Persona, the nostalgic family piece Fanny and Alexander, and his one comedy, Smiles of a Summer Night, which would later inspire Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, as well as Cries and Whispers, Wild Strawberries and Winter Light.

Bergman, who was born in July 14, 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden as the son of a Lutheran clergyman and his wife, escaped the disciplinarian rigor of his childhood through his imagination - he was able to trade a set of tin soldiers for his brother's magic lantern (the image-projecting instrument also inspired the title of Bergman's autobiography). At 19, he left home, spent some time in college before dropping out and obtained a menial job at the Royal Opera House.  In 1942, he became an assistant script writer for the Swedish Film Industry and made his debut (as only screenwriter, not director) with 1944's Torment, which won the Grand Prize of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. Although he'd had several Swedish hits before then, it was 1955's elegant Smiles of a Summer Night that first brought him international renown.

Throughout his career, Bergman was an acclaimed and prolific theatre director who often staged the classics, as well as opera.  Playwrights whose work he reenvisioned on the stage included Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Schiller, Shakespeare, Williams, O'Neill and Moliere, with dozens of productions of such plays as Ghosts, Mary Stuart, The Bacchae, The Misanthrope, The Winter's Tale, Peer Gynt, Miss Julie, A Doll's House, Long Day's Journey Into Night, King Lear, Tartuffe, The Seagull and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  In the 1950s, he was the manager and director of the Malmö city theatre, the executive director of Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre from 1963 through 1966 and executive director of Residenz-Theater of Munich, Germany from 1977 through 1984.  His whimsical production of The Magic Flute was filmed for TV.

Bergman also recruited a number of stage performers with whom he'd worked on stage for his famed "repertory company" of film actors, which included Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann.  Although he and the latter never married, they produced a fruitful professional partnership and were romantically involved for a time.  Their daughter, Linn, is one of nine Bergman children (the director was married five times). He worked regularly with cinematographer Sven Nykvist from 1953.

Bergman won three Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film: 1961's The Virgin Spring, 1962's Through a Glass Darkly and 1984's Fanny and Alexander.  He also won the Irving T. Thalberg Memorial Award Oscar in 1971.  His other films included Autumn Sonata, The Passion of Anna, The Silence, The Hour of the Wolf, and the TV film "Saraband," a continuation of Scenes from a Marriage (once again with Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson). 

Robert Altman and Woody Allen are just a few of the directors whose own work has been influenced by Bergman's genius. At a 70th birthday tribute for Bergman in 1988, Allen - who paid direct homage to Bergman with films such as Interiors - stated that Bergman was "probably the greatest film artist, all things nsidered, since the invention of the motion picture camera."