Ebert Strikes Back

Ebert's article entitled "Defending Ingmar Bergman" prompted me to post my own response to Rosenbaum's op-ed piece on Ingmar Bergman. The satire featured below was written in response to the following excerpt from Rosenbaum's op-ed piece: "Sometimes, though, the best indication of an artist's continuing vitality is simply what of his work remains visible and is still talked about. The hard fact is, Mr. Bergman isn't being taught in film courses or debated by film buffs with the same intensity as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard."

In other words: "If Artist A is not intensely discussed and/or taught within the realm of academia, then Artist A is not extremely vital and/or relevant within the realm of cinema." Is this argument valid? Of course not. To give the members of academia the power to decide what is vital or not within the realm of cinema is ludicrous. Here, I put a mirror up to Rosenbaum's argumentative fallacy through the use of satire (with tongue firmly placed in cheek):

"Who shot J.R.?": Famed Film Critic Rosenbaum Passes Away at Age 97

Heralded film critic of the Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum passed
away this morning in a suburban enclave of the greater tri-town area.
He was 97. When asked for comment, noted film historian Tony Rayns
remarked, "I always loved Jonathan's work, but I much prefer the work
of Roger Ebert. When film professors give lectures in their courses,
Jonathan is never cited as a film critic of great import. Thus, he must be
sub-par. Right?" Following the same line of thought, Armond White
went even further: "The man hated Bergman for reasons that inherently
lack merit and, consequently, he must be dismissed as a reputable
critic. To be sure, Rosenbaum was valuable in his day, but now people
within the annals of academia remember Roger Ebert as the Chi-town
critic of choice, and not Rosenbaum. Professors wear bow ties and
penny loafers. As a result, their opinions on this matter must be
valid." Rosenbaum was best known for his controversial and rather
inept piece about the work of Ingmar Bergman, which is a misguided,
posthumous condemnation of the Swedish director and his seemingly
overpraised canon. Never one to miss a beat, Norman Mailer --
who is currently seeking a place in the Guinness Book of World Records
as the oldest man alive -- remarked: "Oh, sweet irony. I am sure
Ingmar and Jonathan are partaking in a game of squash at this moment.
Let's hope the hatchet has been buried." -- The Associated Press. "The
daily news. Four generic stories at a time."

Saraband is currently playing at the Roger Ebert Music Box in Chicago.

Sincerely,
Karim (a.k.a. livullmannfan)

P.S. With "Defending Ingmar Bergman," Ebert once again shows me why he is one of my favorite film critics.

Hi, Jim,
I see you've corrected it in your transcription, but for Roger to refer to Jonathan as "Rosenberg" rather than "Rosenbaum" -- well, I know he's not in top form these days, but golly.
I don't know if Bergman is more "taught" than Antonioni (how would you measure that? Surely not just a count of the times the words "Bergman" and "class" appear on Google), but it is very clear that academic writing has turned away from him. I don't believe there has been a serious book on Bergman (that Bergman hasn't written himself) since Marc Gervais's poorly written and stuffy 1999 "Ingmar Bergman: Magician and Prophet" in 1999. (Sample prose: “From the beginning, then, it is clear that Bergman’s films rise out of a cultural undergrowth very serious in its preoccupations.” ) The last GOOD book on Bergman would probably be Robin Wood’s 1969 “Ingmar Bergman,” which is long out of print.

Go get 'em, Roger ... I found Rosenbaum's comments tacky at best, coming so soon after Bergman's death, and some of his arguments head-scratchingly weird.

And although I'm not so sure myself that Bergman "had something to teach us all about the death of God," I am sure that nobody has depicted the human struggle over God's presence or absence or flat-out indifference with as much power or humanity.

Critical re-assessment of an artist's work is, well, critical. But for such an assessment to be worth anything (anything more than Rosenbaum's fee from the Times, that is), much time and discussion must pass.

I'm posting here because there isn't a comment box at Ebert.com...

Rosenberg? [...] Jim, you gotta tell Ebert's editor he needs some sleep ;)

The paragraph about "blond blue eyed characters" is not directed against Bergman, but stigmatizes the NYC audience for revealing a too obvious passion for WASP traits. Rosenbaum probably means to emphasis by contrast the lack of love (by the same audience) for contemporean films showing in NYC (that he prefered). without "blond, blue eyed characters"

Dave, HarryTuttle: I blame myself. I should've caught that, obviously. I will only say that it was indeed late, and the piece came in unexpectedly! Anyway, now that I've had a night's rest, I've fixed it!

Nice to see Ebert fight back on behalf of Bergman.

I want to just take issue with one thing Rosenbaum said in his follow-up:

"Maybe Bergman DID have something to teach us all about the Death of God. But will somebody please explain to me what this is?"

I've always believed that the idea or concept of a director's "vision", or what they can "teach us about the world" is completely overblown. Most human beings learn their philosophies of the world at a relatively young age, and even though that philosophy is ever-changing, it is mostly changed through life experience and rarely changed through movies (that is not to discount the power of art to effect one's view of the world).

When Rosenbaum snidely asks us to explain what it is that was so profound that Bergman had to say about the death of God, he's missing the point. Bergman wasn't a great artist because his films said "God is absent from our suffering" and that insight blew our minds. Rather, Bergman is a great artist because he used his own feelings about the presence (and absence) of God and filtered them into his diverse portrayals of the human experience.

If someone is underwhelmed by a director's body of work, or simply their general aesthetic, they will often (as Rosenbaum has done) claim that said director really provided no real insights or worse, they'll drudge up that timeworn criticism that the director "didn't have anything new to say". But really...who does have something new to say? It's not what's said, it's how it's said that makes a work of art special (I know I'm paraphrasing Ebert's dictum "It's not what a movie's about, it's how it's about it").

If, for example, I wanted to launch into an anti-Bresson tirade, I could claim that all of his defenders have been chiming on for so long about the way Bresson's minimalism "reflects a deep spirituality" without demonstrating exactly how he does this. This is, in essence, what Rosenbaum has demanded of Bergman fans...a detailed explanation of what Bergman had to say about the Death of God.

Understand, I have no problem with Rosenbaum's anti-Bergman stance. But the way he went about making his case was wrongheaded from the get-go, and now he just seems to be digging a bigger hole for himself.

By all means, stir the pot. But use a wooden spoon, not a mixer. The soup is flying every whichway!

Thanks, Jim, for reproducing many of my comments from "a film by", where I'd like to think the discussion of the issues raised by my article, pro and con, has been on a higher level than in Roger's article. I'd just like to add four responses to that article here:

1. The best discussion of Dreyer's use of space is to be found in David Bordwell's book on Dreyer, which I highly recommend. David is Roger's favorite academic critic, and understandably so, given the rigor of his visual analysis, so I hope Roger can check out Bordwell's treatment of Dreyer's use of space, which is quite different from what his article suggests it is. To broach this matter much more briefly, I hope I can be forgiven for quoting from another recent post of mine in "a film by": "Syntactically, Dreyer's editing and his way
of combining a track in one direction with a pan in another direction are more than just personal inflections, and the same goes for Bresson's use of inexpressiveness in both performances and shots in
order to make the juxtapositions between shots and what might be
called the involuntary expressiveness of bodies register in a different way from how we've experienced them before. In both cases, I think what's new isn't just a new 'personal' meaning but a new way of
producing meaning--and that for me signifies a change in language."

2. I'm afraid Dreyer didn't have a strict Lutheran upbringing--that's been an old wives' tale ever since Maurice Drouzy's Dreyer biography came out. Dreyer hated his adopted parents, but not for any religious reasons. And I don't know anything about Bresson's religious upbringing; if Roger does, he should speak up. (As for Bresson's religious beliefs, a matter of much speculation, that's also been debated at some length in "a film by" over the past few days.)

3. Bergman's "seeming contempt" for digital video "apart from its usefulness as a simple recording device" in "Saraband" isn't a sin in my book but a plus. That's what I argued when I reviewed the film in the Reader--at least that's what I tried to argue. What I find objectionable at times in "Saraband," as I say in my article, are some of the emotions being recorded and Bergman's lack of interest in critiquing or distancing himself from them in any way.

4. Moreover, I have absolutely nothing against Bergman having used blond and blue-eyed cast members, nearly all of whom are extremely talented as well as Swedish. My objection is only to the way this use and practice became "a brand to be adopted and emulated"-- by Woody Allen, among others.

Peace,

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan:

I was happy to find your comment about trying to stir the Bergman pot, not close the lid on it. I didn't read your piece that way originally, but I think the discussions it has generated have been healthy and stimulating indeed. Whether or not Bergman was being argued about with intensity before, I think we've seen some indications that he is now! I'd love to know if you were surprised by the amount of response the piece received or if this is pretty much what you expected would happen. Either way, it's given me lots to think about, and prompted me to go back and look at earlier Bergman AND Dreyer films I have either neglected or don't recall very well. That's a good thing, I think.

Best, Jim

The thing I find hardest to believe about this exchange.

"There are some very important Bergman films that I still haven't seen; I'm looking forward to seeing 'Fanny and Alexander' for the first time next weekend..."

How can Rosenbaum, a critic I read and respect greatly, have not seen FANNY AND ALEXANDER?

I mean, I was a teenager when it came out and knew it was an important film that I had to see. I wasn't even a published critic writing on world cinema. It was one of the biggest foreign films of the 1980's. People who didn't even see foreign films saw it. It was widely available on VHS and now DVD.

I think this is an even bigger surprise than when Gene Siskel on SISKEL AND EBERT in the mid 90's stated he had never seen Godard's CONTEMPT until the re-issue.

Never having written anything for the New York Times before, much less the Op Ed page, I didn't know exactly what to expect-- although I wasn't surprised when some people seemed to react hyperbolically
to my piece simply BECAUSE it was in the NY Times. That seems to go with the territory. For the same reason, I don't think I could have written such an article for the Times WITHOUT it being to some extent a piece about fashion; that goes with the territory, too. And of course, by necessity, this limits the piece in some ways--at the same time that it increases its immediate impact.

Best, Jonathan

I didn't realize we had so much overlap from the DVDBeaver list to this blog. So I'll add to the overlap by repeating what I said there.

I think there is a great rebuttal to be written to Jonathan's article by someone so inclined. Mr. Ebert has failed to do so. Forgiving the "Rosenberg" error, it is puzzling how MR. Ebert couldhave misread Jonathan's article so completely that he thought he was claiming that Dreyer was more of an entertainer than Bergman when in fact, Jonathan said the exact opposite.

Also, I don't think the technique of searching for a "film class on X" is particularly useful. I searched for "film class on 'paris hilton'" and came up with 2.3 million results, more than Bergman and Godard combined in Mr. Ebert's example. Has our gal Paris been vaulted to the top of the film canon now?

Mr. Ebert's point about comparing the importance of form vs. content seems apt, but it's a pretty complex discussion that started shortly after the Lumieres filmed some train or something, and hasn't let up much since.

Rosenbaum criticizes Bergman on two fronts: firstly, that he wasn't a formal innovator like Dreyer or Bresson; secondly, that what he had to say was unoriginal, anachronistic and full of "ugly" emotions. Since he doesn't really do anything in his nyt article to qualify or substantiate the latter point, I'd like to engage him on the former.

Rosenbaum and Ebert seem to be sitting on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to form vs. content. I'll grant that Bergman wasn't much of a stylistic innovator, but why does he have to be? In most of Bergman's films I find a basic, efficient, relatively expressive classicism, with a touch of the bracing rigour of someone like Dreyer. It's not the most amazing thing in the world, but so what? It's impressive nonetheless. Rosenbaum criticizes Bergman for being non-innovative and then softens the blow with a comparison to Cukor. But if simple classicism is enough for Cukor, why isn't it enough for Bergman? Why are Hollywood's classical auteurs praised for their self-effacing styles while an arthouse director like Bergman is criticized for his? Does Bergman's failure to change film language makes him less important than Antonioni or Dreyer or Bresson? Sure it does. But that doesn't necessarily make him a poor filmmaker. Also, while I do think visual style matters more than verbal content in movies, I don't think it's the be-all and end-all of evaluation. Bergman's style wasn't as great as Antonioni's or Tarkovsky's, but people have obviously found a lot of compensation in what he had to say about the world. Are they right? These days I'm not sure. But it's definitely something to consider. You shouldn't have to be a radical formal innovator to go down in film history; if that were the case, then I don't see how people like Raoul Walsh or George Cukor or Leo McCarey got into the canon.

When did I ever call Bergman a poor filmmaker? I can't ever recall even thinking such a thing. The very idea strikes me as preposterous.

I love many films by Bergman, Cukor, McCarey, and Walsh regardless of whether or not they're innovative. There are also some films by these filmmakers that I don't like so much, and they aren't innovative either.

I never said simple classicism "wasn't enough" for Bergman. I was talking about why some films mattered more to me than other films, which actually had less to do with innovation versus classicism than they do with changing and enriching my view of the world-- something that for me Bergman didn't do very much or very often, even when he made great films (e.g., Persona).

Maybe he did that for other people. If he did, I'm not calling what he did in the least bit illegitimate or bogus. I'd just like to hear more about it--what he did to enrich (as opposed to confirm or ratify) other people's views of the world, hopefully in terms that I don't find overly familiar or glib or boring. All of which I find in some of the larger claims made for Bergman that I've been hearing for almost half a century. This is what my piece was reacting to.

I suppose I was technically wrong in supposing that you view Bergman as a "poor filmmaker"; for that, I apologize. I guess I was just responding to the fact that nearly your entire piece for the New York Times was negative. I failed to make the distinction between not particularly liking Bergman that much overall(and I think that's a fair interpretation of your piece)and thinking of him as a poor-quality filmmaker. I don't actually see a huge difference between those two things. A notable difference, to be sure, but not a huge one. As far as me stressing formal innovation as one your supposed criteria, I was responding to your repeated evaluative comparisons of Bergman to other, more formally innovative, directors, which were quite prominent in the article. I wasn't at all trying to say that was your only criterion for enjoying and respecting a film, just that it seemed to be one of the two main criteria by which you were evaluating Bergman and his place in the canon. I don't think my post reflected anything different from that.

"I don't think I could have written such an article for the Times WITHOUT it being to some extent a piece about fashion"

That's interesting. Does it mean that a film critic is willing to put on a fashion reviewer suit to get published in the NYT? Was it a requirement from the editor? Except for his known disinterest in Bergman, this type of criticism sounds so far away from the higher level of critical scrutiny Rosenbaum usually advocates...

Phew - I'm gone for a week...

I've missed throwing in my two cents about the Director who has become my personal favorite over the years (next to Tarkovsky.) I also haven't had a chance to write something of my own, somehow words haven't been able to come together.

I will say though that Rosenbaum seemed to do a lot of back-peddling from his initial statements...oh, it was for the sake of argument...oh, but we had to cut a lot out...oh, but I haven't seen the "important" ones. Please. If you're going to make an educated statement about anything, make sure you're at least educated, or refrain from speaking as if you were. The depth of his analysis when concerned with Bergman's popularity covers everything that is not educated, even the "Wow, they were able to show more naked boobs in Sweden!" argument is thrown in for good measure. Whether it was joking or not, he should at least try to take his own arguments as seriously as he wants the Bergamnites of the world to take theirs. And I thought entertaining people was following conventional film making methods.

I agree with two people's statements, names I cannot recall...the first was, nobody can do it the way Bergman has done it, no one is as much a class act these days, the second is that he was never trying to change the world, but to show the world, to question the things we understand through raw personal experience.

I'll get around to writing something more lengthy soon, til then, watching "Scenes from a Marriage" for the first time. Started it just before the man passed on.

Mr. Rosenbaum says:

I'm not calling what he did in the least bit illegitimate or bogus. I'd just like to hear more about it--what he did to enrich (as opposed to confirm or ratify) other people's views of the world, hopefully in terms that I don't find overly familiar or glib or boring.

Well, this is certainly quite a gauntlet to throw down; Bergman's admirers and discontents have been battling it out for 50 years. I suspect one reason we may be seeing Bergman discussed less in critical circles these days is that so much has been said in the past.

(Incidentally, I just did a Google search for "INGMAR BERGMAN" SITE:*.EDU and got 3,190 hits; analogous searches for Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer received 3220, 1160, 962, and 450 hits, respectively. That's hardly conclusive but probably of more meaning than searching for "film class on".)

I have neither the bonafides nor articulate skill to satisfactorily answer Mr. Rosenbaum's challenge here. I do hold Bergman in the highest regard; I can speak to what I get out of movies, and how Bergman satisfies that.

In Sculpting in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky speaks of film as a medium for relating to its audience experience. We are exposed to experiences we never would have otherwise beheld, and light and perspective is shone on experiences we have. We are made to relate to and examine a host of experiences, emotions, and circumstances of which we otherwise would have been ignorant.

I have found this to be a helpful unifying principle in identifying and describing works that have been meaningful to me. The search for experience is at the root of my receiving satisfaction from films from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Barry Lyndon, from Fritz Lang's Spione to The Passenger. In some cases, what I respond to is what strikes me as a relateable depiction of experiences which may be close to my own, such as in Swingers or American Graffiti. "Experience" is often emotional or intellectual, of course; one doesn't need to have wanted to be an axe murderer to relate to the frustration and entrapment felt by Jack Torrance in The Shining.

On that score, the experiences provided to me by the vast majority of Bergman films I've seen are moving, thought-provoking, and sometimes revelatory. Bergman takes me on journeys amongst people with concerns not dissimilar to mine (and, evidently, not dissimilar to many people's), expresses them in an engaging and, yes, often entertaining (is that a dirty word in modern film criticism?) fashion.

Back to Mr. Rosenbaum:

I was talking about why some films mattered more to me than other films, which actually had less to do with innovation versus classicism than they do with changing and enriching my view of the world-- something that for me Bergman didn't do very much or very often, even when he made great films (e.g., Persona).

I don't know that any Bergman film has changed my view of the world -- though, honestly, I'm old enough to be stubborn and set in my ways, so I don't know that I can name any film that has performed this task for me.

But enriched? My life is enriched by the images of Isak Borg watching his parents fish, and by Harriet Andersson swinging with her sisters. It's enriched by the tumult of Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman in Shame, and again my Ullman breaking down into tears at the end of Saraband. It's enriched by Winter Light's depiction of an isolated and confused man trusting in his rites and rituals to provide whatever meaning they can. It's enriched by the apocalyptic terror of the procession of flagellants in The Seventh Seal. It's enriched by "Father spoke to me!" at the end of Through a Glass Darkly. It's enriched by these and other depictions of lonely people reaching out for meaning and connection, with God and with others, and doing the best they can. We all suffer this; Bergman's manifestations of that struggle have by and large been moving to me.

My life as a moviewatcher has been enriched by seeing the stories of men and women like me and unlike me, engaging in acts and discussions familiar and foreign, providing me with understanding and catharsis. Ingmar Bergman is responsible for many of these moments. We can debate his formalistic prowess and ingenuity (and that is not an unworthy debate), and explore how his formal approach enhances his storytelling (or not), but at the end of the day, Bergman's cinema has provided me with a host of experiences I would have been worse off without.

Maybe off topic, but this was bugging me as I read the reader responses: the comments expressed by those shocked that a film critic hasn't seen a film and still has the gall to critique its filmmaker are somewhat uninformed... experts in any sort of artistic discipline will have missed more than just a few of the classics of the form--seriously, how many English professors have read Ulysses? Don't give Rosenbaum flak for missing a film, unless you want to criticize all critics for committing the same sin

JBS, well put sir. "Sculpting in Time" is something I hold in great esteem as well.

Last night I saw the three-hour version of Fanny and Alexander--the version that Bergman himself regarded as the compromised theatrical version (which is also the one that ranked so highly among critics in the Sight and Sound poll), not the much longer director's cut made for Swedish TV. The latter is also available in the same Criterion box set, though I haven't encountered much evidence that most of my colleagues outside of Scandinavian countries, including those who rank Bergman so highly and profess to be scholars of his work, have bothered to see it.

Sorry, guys, but I saw the three-hour Fanny and Alexander back to back with the 1953 Sawdust and Tinsel, and I much prefer the earlier film. Both are impressive in some ways, but the earlier film is far more impressive to me. Maybe I'd feel differently about the five-hour version, but that's not the version people have been criticizing me for not seeing.

For a very smart and adept estimation of what's good and what's not so good in the three-hour Fanny and Alexander, check out Pauline Kael's detailed review. Don't come back to me with Oscar nominations. After all, the vile racism of The Deer Hunter as well as what I assume is the boring wartime propaganda of Mrs. Miniver were both validated and ratified with best-picture Oscars.

To all the most vocally fervent Bergman and Fanny and Alexander supporters out there: when are you going to see the original 312-minute TV version and explain why the 188-minute version is presumably better? Even Kael seemed to imply that when she concluded her review by noting that Bergman ALSO made a TV version, failing to acknowledge that the shorter version was simply a digest that Bergman had to put together in order to get the film shown in theaters.

In all honesty, I don't care for anything I have seen by Bergman from Cries and Whispers onward (including the superficial and deadly dull Cries and Whispers) except perhaps for Saraband. I should admit I have not seen Autumn Sonata.

If I'm watching a 312 minute movie this weekend, it's going to be Peter Watkins' "La Commune" which I finally bought on DVD. OK, that's 345 minutes. Though according to IMBD there is a 555 minute "long version" in France. Has anyone managed to watch both versions?

Mr. Rosenbaum:

I would never make the statement that the 188-minute theatrical cut of "Fanny & Alexander" is better than the 312-minute television cut because it simply isn't. I still find it to be a great film, but the longer version is a deeper, more cohesive experience. In fact, the only reason I ever bring out the theatrical cut from the Criterion boxset is to listen to Peter Cowie's wonderful commentary. Beyond that, experiencing "Fanny & Alexander" over the course of four nights—one night per episode—is my favorite way to view the film. I must admit, though, that I find it hard to restrict myself to one episode per night.

Great discussion. All I have time to add at the moment is this: I've seen the five-hour Fanny and Alexander and many my friends have, too. I'm a bit surprised at Rosenbaum's assertion that few people have seen it. Personally, I'd wager I have ten friends who've seen the uncut Fanny and Alexander for every one who has seen Sátántango. Many of my friends, in fact, found ways to watch it *before* the Criterion DVD came out. I remember when it played, sold out, at the PFA back in the 80s and has played elsewhere in the US before the Criterion release. In a way, however, that's beside the point. While I think the five hour version is better, I doubt a person who didn’t care for the shorter one would change his or her mind after watching the longer version.