The world is still mourning the death of cinema titans Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni who both died on the same day two weeks ago today.
Two filmmakers directly influenced by each of the foreign language masters, Marty Scorsese and Woody Allen, both wrote affectionate and reverent tributes this weekend in the New York Times.
In a piece called, “The Man Who Set Film Free,” Scorsese wrote about the sensation of seeing the Italian director’s “L’Avventura” for the first time, almost 50 years ago.
Of Antonioni’s ennui-felled bourgeoisie hipsters, he wrote, “The characters were rich, beautiful in one way but, you might say, spiritually ugly. Who were they to me? Who would I be to them?” Scorsese’s praise of the film was unqualified, ” ‘L’Avventura’ gave me one of the most profound shocks I’ve ever had at the movies, greater even than ‘Breathless’ or ‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour‘ (from Alain Resnais).” Scorsese made note of Antonioni’s character’s lack of self-awareness, the pretext many of their actions held and the haunting impact his films left on the viewer. “Antonioni realized something extraordinary: the pain of simply being alive. And the mystery.”
I crossed paths with Antonioni a number of times over the years. Once we spent Thanksgiving together, after a very difficult period in my life, and I did my best to tell him how much it meant to me to have him with us. Later, after he’d had a stroke and lost the power of speech, I tried to help him get his project “The Crew” off the ground — a wonderful script written with his frequent collaborator Mark Peploe, unlike anything else he’d ever done, and I’m sorry it never happened.
But it was his images that I knew, much better than the man himself. Images that continue to haunt me, inspire me. To expand my sense of what it is to be alive in the world.
The neurotic Woody Allen spoke of Ingmar Bergman in knowing terms having been relatively close friends and having spent many hours on the phone with him (afraid of flying, Allen turned down many of Bergman’s offers to come visit in Sweden). In a piece called, “The Man Who Asked Hard Questions,” Allen wrote that Bergman once told him he “didn’t want to die on a sunny day, and not having been there, I can only hope he got the flat weather all directors thrive on” (overcast days make for great cinematography).
Allen also noted with almost bewilderment about how he was called ad nauseum by reporters after Bergman’s death for a quote being that he was a veritable “expert.” “As if I had anything of real value to add to the grim news besides once again simply extolling his greatness,” Allen wrote. “How had he influenced me, they asked? He couldn’t have influenced me, I said, he was a genius and I am not a genius and genius cannot be learned or its magic passed on.”
By virtue of his oeuvre, Allen already successfully answered the question he posited in the tribute, “Can one’s work be influenced by Groucho Marx and Ingmar Bergman?”
The nebbish director wrote of Bergman’s self-doubt’s, his “allegiance to theatricality,” his questions of morality, mortality and his disinterest in the box-office bottom line. He also aspired to Bergman’s prolific output. “Bergman made about 60 films in his lifetime, I have made 38. At least if I can’t rise to his quality maybe I can approach his quantity.”
