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Dig Two Holes: Michelangelo Antonioni & Ingmar Bergman

August 1st, 2007 by Scott Marks

Michelangelo Antonioni

Ingmar Bergman

Up until yesterday, when people asked me to name the single greatest living filmmaker my instant response was “Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni.” Even more than my personal deities Jerry and Marty, these two forever changed the shape and texture of cinema. Every frame of a Michelangelo Antonioni film oozed love and respect for both cinema and his camera. There is something unique about the way Italians move their cameras. Think of the slow, lateral dollies of Storaro/Bertolucci, Tonino/Sergio, Fellini/Rotunno, etc. As I write I’m running the opening credits from La Notte and The Passenger’s 360 degree pan though my head.

Bergman filmed actors talking, Antonioni vast cinematic landscapes. Antonioni’s fascination with architecture is much more compelling than Ingmar Bergman contemplating the “death of God.” And Name another director who employed architecture, or color for that matter, as a “third character” better than Antonioni.

Bergman was also indirectly responsible for many of Woody Allen’s worst films (Interiors, Shadows and Fog, September).

If Antonioni was a bolt of silk, Bergman was a bowl of silt. Cold, visceral silt at that. It is a shame that these two had to die on the same day for the Swede is bound to grab the lion’s share of the splashy obits.

Bergman was theater, Antonioni pure cinema. Long live cinema!

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Filed Under Obituaries