The encounter with significant films by Bergman in which the atmosphere and the
décor as well as the original camera movement are always in function of
presenting the protagonist’s mental state, furthermore which treat human face as
the most interesting as if it were a landscape imbued with the most meaning, and
the author constantly questions essential existential issues, will certainly be
an exceptional experience.

By the present-day younger and middle-aged generation of film lovers as well
as critics and other film professionals, Ingmar Bergman (1918) is a classic and
former champion of art film. The most important question is how much is his
classic work still alive and how does it correspond with present-day audience.
Viewers of this representative program that shows most of his significant films,
each and every one for himself, will be able to find the answer to the above
posed question.

However we have to note that Bergman can be placed into art film only from
today’s point of view, because contemporaries of his probably most important
creative period from mid 50’s to mid 60’s, as well as in the time of his later
films as Krikova i šaputanja (1972), Prizora iz bračnog života
(1974) or Fanny and Alexander (1982), regarded him as a great author
whose films were shown in commercial theaters all over the world (even in our
country), and he received many awards on the biggest festivals like Cannes,
Berlin and Venice. All this does not have to prove that they are not art films,
but even so he won three Oscars, which are certainly not given to extremely
elitist works. The time when Bergman was regarded as one of the greatest authors
in the history of world cinematography, was the time when film makers and those
who wrote about films went through a lot of trouble to prove that film is an
equal artistic field as the others, and so Bergman’s films that explore the
depths of human soul, are full of layers of meaning, nuanced psychology,
innovative and visually effective director’s procedures, were the best proof
that those efforts were justified.

But, about a quarter of a century among film critics (especially among domestic
young critics) there prevailed a tendency for genre critique, which no longer
treated film as art but rather as a medium (hence the present-day insisting on
profits i.e. ratings) and valued films according to how much they satisfied the
laws of certain genres.

Therefore, not only was art film in terms of this ”democracy” treated as an
unequal genre, but also elements of art films became the most objectionable and
were almost automatically compared to the artificial. In such atmosphere,
Bergman no longer could find his place, except when the innovation and
revolution of this new critique was based exactly upon the negative relationship
to his films. This critique found its foothold in genre works of Hollywood
classics, but at the same time encouraged the complete domination of American
films in theaters. However for those who are tired of the offer of such films in
theaters (even though there are many valuable films among those), the encounter
with significant films by Bergman in which atmosphere and the décor as well as
the original camera movement are always in function of presenting the
protagonist’s mental state, furthermore which treat human face as the most
interesting as if it were a landscape imbued with the most meaning, and the
author constantly questions essential existential issues, will certainly be an
exceptional experience. (Tomislav Kurelec).