Reviews for Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity

The average rating for Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-04-09 00:00:00 Wheeler Steffes I thought that there were only a few passages I found entirely worth reading. Singer spends too much of his time explaining and basically telling every detail of each of Bergman's films before then making one comment about what that particular scene 'shows' about Bergman. I think In regards to movies maybe a brief line about the section of the film you are referring to to reiterate what point it is you are making then, other than this, expect the reader to go away and do their homework (watching the films themselves.) The things I wanted to read about rather than Bergman's philosophies on life were in fact his philosophies on film, the making of film, and his thoughts on his own films. But rather the majority of what we got in this book was Bergman's philosophy on life and religion. It's almost as if Singer was searching for life meaning for himself and Bergman was his idol and so therefore it was natural for him to want to mimic his own thoughts and life upon Bergman's to make a case for his own world views. I think a little bit of life views/ religious views is ok, but not so much that that is all we read about. I thought that The only section worthwhile reading in regards to film is the introduction and then the section on childhood and memory basically the first chapter which has SOME areas of discussion around what film can do. Albeit you do have to search for these moments. I thought that the Epilogue was unnecessary to say the very least as literally all it contained was a description of his movies and in no way really talked about Bergman. I was hopeful originally that the Epilogue would be the thing that makes statements about how Bergman said what he was trying to say, and his thoughts on filming, or at the very least a breakdown of what was discussed and the relevance and some kind of conclusion to it all. But no. The book just ended. Overall average.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-02-28 00:00:00 Cathy Mapes Excellent read! If you're an Ingmar Bergman fan like I am (and I'm pretty obsessed), this is a must read.