Ingmar Bergman Names the 11 Films He Liked Above All Others (1994)

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may remem­ber our Octo­ber post on Ing­mar Bergman’s eval­u­a­tion of his equal­ly titan­ic col­leagues in cin­e­ma, from Jean-Luc Godard (“affect­ed”) to Alfred Hitck­cock (“infan­tile”). Though the Bergman faith­ful and fans Andrei Tarkovsky often find much to dis­agree about, the Swedish direc­tor of pic­tures like Wild Straw­ber­ries and Per­sona had the absolute high­est praise for the Russ­ian direc­tor of pic­tures like Andrei Rublev and Solaris. (Watch Tarkovsky’s major films free online here.) “When film is not a doc­u­ment, it is dream,” said Bergman. “That is why Tarkovsky is the great­est of them all. He moves with such nat­u­ral­ness in the room of dreams. He does­n’t explain. He is a spec­ta­tor, capa­ble of stag­ing his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most will­ing of media. All my life I have ham­mered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so nat­u­ral­ly.”

And now we have a few more words the old­er mas­ter spoke about the younger, whom he phys­i­cal­ly out­lived — but, by his own admis­sion, could­n’t artis­ti­cal­ly out­do — thanks to a cer­tain Tyler Har­ris, who post­ed them to My Cri­te­ri­on. In his remarks there, Bergman con­tin­ues with the metaphor of Tarkovsky an an inhab­i­tant of a realm of dreams: “Sud­den­ly, I found myself stand­ing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, nev­er been giv­en to me,” Bergman said of first watch­ing Andrei Rublev, which he named at the Göte­borg Film Fes­ti­val 1994 as a favorite. “I felt encour­aged and stim­u­lat­ed: some­one was express­ing what I had always want­ed to say with­out know­ing how.” He also select­ed Fed­eri­co Fellini’s La Stra­da, which prompt­ed a back­ground sto­ry about his ill-fat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion with Felli­ni and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa under leg­endary pro­duc­er Dino de Lau­ren­ti­is. Kuro­sawa’s own Rashomon, which you can watch free online, also appears on this favorites list of Bergman’s, which runs, alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, as fol­lows:

• Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1971)
• The Cir­cus (Char­lie Chap­lin, 1928)
• The Con­duc­tor (Andrzej Waj­da, 1980)
• Mar­i­anne and Juliane (Mar­garethe von Trot­ta, 1981)
• The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Drey­er, 1928)
• The Phan­tom Car­riage (Vic­tor Sjöström, 1921)
• Port of Shad­ows (Mar­cel Carné, 1938)
• Raven’s End (Bo Wilder­berg, 1963)
• Rashomon (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1950)
• La stra­da (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1954)
• Sun­set Boule­vard (Bil­ly Wilder, 1950)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.