International Film Research Project (very easy)

Ingmar Bergman and the Cinema of Ideas

Ingmar Bergman is an inevitable figure on any serious list of the greatest film directors of all time . During the 1950s Bergman established himself as perhaps the quintessential foreign filmmaker with a series of movies that challenged the conventions of Hollywood 's narrative ideology . Bergman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director three times and three of his movies won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film . Bergman became the model of the auteur for the French New Wave due to the fact

that he wrote the scripts for most of his films and put a personal imprint on them . It becomes quite obvious from viewing just a handful of Bergman 's movies that he differed substantially from the Hollywood style of moviemaking by virtue of this strain of personal vision

Rather than relying on straightforward plots or even character development to drive his stories , Bergman 's films of the `50s were built around metaphysical and existential angst . Interestingly , however , the angst found in Bergman 's films is devoid of the preoccupation with the specter of nuclear annihilation and the collapse of the moral tradition in the post-war era . At the same time , one could argue that Bergman was making his own version of film noir rather than populating his examination of a suddenly more ambiguous world with saps , low-lifes and femmes fatale , however , the Bergman version of film noir exists on a more metaphysical plane . Bergman 's conscious decision to...