Volume 41, Number 11 · June 9, 1994
The Magician
By Michael Meyer
Images: My Life in Film
by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Marianne Ruuth
Arcade, 442 pp., $27.95
The Best Intentions
by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Joan Tate
Arcade, 298 pp., $22.95
Sunday's Children
by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Joan Tate
Arcade, 153 pp., $16.95
Ingmar Bergman: Film and Stage
by Robert Emmet Long
Abrams, 208 pp., $45.00
I worked with Ingmar Bergman for two weeks in 1970 when he came to London to direct Hedda Gabler for the National Theatre. His charm was spectacular. So were the demons that possessed him. What terrible things he said about people once their backs were turned. How skillfully he instructed the actors, and how shamelessly he manipulated the play so as to make it an Ingmar Bergman statement rather than an Ibsen one. Humility is not one of this gifted man's qualities, though he can seem humble in interviews. Not for him the approach of a soloist toward a great composer. My agent, the late Peggy Ramsay, pithily summed up his Hedda when she said that for anyone who didn't know or didn't like Ibsen it was a great evening.
Review, 3123 words
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