HOME * REVIEWS * MIDTOWN * FESTIVALS * TOP 10 PROJECT

ESSAYS & ARTICLES * ODDS & ENDS * LINKS * CONTACT

THE
TOP 5
PROJECT

WEEK NO. 35
Main Page (including links to all past Top 5 weeks)

THE TOP 5 INGMAR BERGMAN FILMS:

view full results       see how points are awarded
Rank Film Points L #1
#1 Persona (1966) 66 18 8
#2 Wild Strawberries (1957) 38 11 4
#3 The Seventh Seal (1957) 34 10 -
#4 Fanny and Alexander (1982) 23 7 3
#5 The Silence (1963) 19 6 1
L=How many lists each film appears on             #1=How many number one votes each film recieves

In honouring one of the great masters of cinema, it came as no surprise that Persona won the week with a total of 66 points. Also no surprise, Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal followed with 38 and 34 points respectively. In fourth place came (another no-surprise moment) Fanny and Alexander with 23 points total. What did come as somewhat of a surprise (at least to me) was the fifth place finish of The Silence, eeking out 19 points, just beating a gaggle of almost-rans, Scenes From a Marriage, Winter Light, Smiles on a Summer Night, Cries and Whispers and The Virgin Spring. Of course I cannot think of a single Bergman film that is not totally worthy of inclusion here. He will certainly be missed.

Individual lists:

Albert H. Muth
Auteurophile

  1. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

  2. Cries and Whispers (1972)

  3. Persona (1966)

  4. Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence (61-63)

  5. The Virgin Spring (1960)



Jonathan Rosenbaum
Film Critic, Chicago Reader
Author, Essential Cinema, Movie Mutations and many others

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

  3. The Magician (1958)

  4. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

  5. Now About All These Women (1964)



David Sterritt
Chairman, National Society of Film Critics

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. The Silence (1963)

  3. Saraband (2003)

  4. Scenes From a Marriage (1973) -- Swedish television version only

  5. The Magic Flute (1975)



Carrie Rickey
Film Critic, Philadelphia Inquirer

  1. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

  2. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  3. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  4. Persona (1966)

  5. Fanny and Alexander (1982)



Jeffrey M. Anderson
Freelance Film Critic, Combustible Celluloid
Las Vegas Weekly, Metro (Silicon Valley), etc.

I should preface by saying that, of all the Bergmans I've seen, the inexplicably popular "The Seventh Seal" is my least favorite. Though it has some beautiful and striking moments, I consider it a somewhat juvenile collection of art house cliches. John Russell Taylor put it best: "[It] strikes one as making implicit claims for itself out of all proportion to its actual achievements." That said, Bergman is still one of my favorite filmmakers, and I have adored almost all of his other films (so far). He will be missed.

  1. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  2. Winter Light (1962)

  3. Persona (1966)

  4. Saraband (2003)

  5. Cries and Whispers (1972)

With Fanny and Alexander and The Virgin Spring coming in a close sixth and seventh.


Christopher Null
Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Filmcritic.com

  1. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

  2. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  3. Shame (1968)

  4. Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

  5. The Silence (1963)



Dennis Schwartz
Film Critic Ozu's World Movie Reviews

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  3. The Silence (1963)

  4. Through A Glass Darkly (1961)

  5. The Passion of Anna (1969)



Peter Sobczynski
Film Critic, eFilmCritic.com

  1. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

  2. The Virgin Spring (1960)

  3. Cries and Whispers (1972)

  4. Persona (1966)

  5. Saraband (2003)



Film Prophet
Film Critic, FilmProphet.com

  1. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  2. Fanny and Alexander (1982)

  3. The Virgin Spring (1960)

  4. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  5. Persona (1966)



Michael Parent
Film Student

  1. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  2. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  3. Persona (1966)

  4. Cries and Whispers (1972)

  5. Saraband (2003)



Matt Severson
Film Enthusiast

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  3. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  4. Winter Light (1962)

  5. The Passion of Anna (1969)



Mathew Viola
Film Fanatic

  1. Persona (1966) - In what may or may not be a series of dreams, hallucinations, fantasies and nightmares, reality and illusion blur spectacularly in Bergman’s chilling, visually imaginative examination of the mental breakdowns of two women, an actress who refuses to speak and the talkative nurse tending her, whose separate identities splinter and crack apart, only to reassemble themselves into a merged whole. Bergman brilliantly visualizes his theme of spliced personalities/identity crises with haunting close-ups of the women, whose physical resemblance to one another is underscored by their symmetrical positioning in the frame, and whose disorienting state of role confusion finds creepy expression in the superimposed melding of their faces.

  2. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) - Before acquiring his reputation as a director of heavy dramas, Bergman made this sophisticated bedroom farce/comedy of manners, which has more in common with Lubitsche, Ophuls, and Renoir’s The Rules of the Game than the existential angst of The Silence, The Seventh Seal or Persona. You won’t find the characters of Smiles of a Summer Night suffering the tortures of the damned in some bleak, desolate landscape under a gloomy, overcast sky, or anguishing over the mute indifference of God, because they’re too preoccupied with whom they should be sleeping to concern themselves with spiritual/metaphysical matters. With Smiles of a Summer Night, Bergman crafted an intricately plotted but lucidly told satirical romp about the battle-of-the-sexes, which celebrates the slyness with which women use their feminine wiles to manipulate men (“Men never know what’s good for them: we have to set them on the right track”), and pokes fun at the petty, immature competitive nature of men. Boasting an amusing plot, well-observed characters, superb performances and sparkling dialogue, whose epigrammatic wit bears comparison to Wilde, this is the funniest, most enjoyable film of Bergman’s career.

  3. Shame (1968) - Bergman’s bleak, apocalyptic vision of war powerfully demonstrates how quickly and easily that tenuous thread between order and chaos, peace and conflict, civilization and savagery can be snapped.

  4. The Magician (1958) - Nothing is as it appears in this film. Everything is phony, a sham: Von Sydow wears a disguise and pretends to be mute; his wife disguises herself as a man; two people “die” only to return from the dead; the bourgeois marriages are rife with deception and infidelity. And Von Sydow’s mesmerist, who may represent Bergman himself, is exposed as a charlatan by a group of rationalists. Does this reflect Bergman’s self-doubt as a filmmaker, his fear of being exposed as a fraud by critics? Might it also reflect the doubts of the believer, his fear that his faith may be exposed as bogus by science? These intriguing possibilities lend Bergman’s sadly underrated film a richly metaphorical subtext, though its dark humor (Von Sydow’s randy assistant regrets giving a woman a “love potion”, which is nothing more than a placebo, when she exhausts him with her insatiability) and creepy horror, like Von Sydow’s “posthumous” revenge on one of his persecutors, ensure the film need not be read for deeper meanings to be enjoyed.

  5. Fanny and Alexander (1983) - You don’t have to know anything about Bergman to appreciate Fanny and Alexander, which is both a deeply personal coming-of-age saga and an enchanting fairy-tale in which imprisoned innocents are rescued from their abusive, evil stepfather. However, familiarity with his life and work will deepen the film’s impact, as it is both partly autobiographical and a summation of his career, which contains numerous references to previous Bergman films: the anguish of the deathbed scene recalls Cries and Whispers; characters talk about wearing masks and playing roles a la Persona; the Bishop comes to realize that people hate him, just like the professor did in Wild Strawberries etc.



Doug Pratt
DVD Critic, DVDLaser.com

  1. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) - (it's happier than Persona)

  2. Persona (1966)

  3. Winter Light (1962) - (his most under-appreciated masterpiece)

  4. Fanny and Alexander (1982) - (miniseries version)

  5. Hour of the Wolf (1968) - (more fun than Wild Strawberries)



Joel Webb
Film Enthusiast

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. The Silence (1963)

  3. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  4. Winter Light (1962)

  5. Hour of the Wolf (1968)



Jason Mlinarsik
Film Enthusiast

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  3. Scenes from a Marriage (1973)

  4. Shame (1968)

  5. Cries and Whispers (1972)



Lucas McNelly
Film Enthusiast

  1. Scenes From a Marriage (1973)

  2. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  3. Persona (1966)

  4. Cries and Whispers (1972)

  5. Wild Strawberries (1957)



Hans Lucas
Film Syudent

  1. The Silence (1963)

  2. The Virgin Spring (1960)

  3. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  4. Persona (1966)

  5. Wild Strawberries (1957)



Jesse Walker
Film Enthusiast and Managing Editor, Reason Magazine

Not long after Ingmar Bergman passed away, I found myself in an ER awaiting an appendectomy. A previous patient had left the room's soundless TV tuned to Turner Classic Movies, which was paying tribute to the director by broadcasting The Seventh Seal. So now I can tell people that when I went to the hospital, I saw Death hovering above my bed. And that I got a good laugh out of it.

  1. Persona (1966)

  2. Hour of the Wolf (1968)

  3. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  4. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  5. Shame (1968)



Ryan Krahn
Grad Student in Philosophy & Film Enthusiast

  1. Scenes From a Marriage (1973)

  2. Winter Light (1962)

  3. After the Rehearsal (1984)

  4. Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

  5. Saraband (2003)



Kevyn Knox
Film Critic, Essayist + Historian

  1. Wild Strawberries (1957)

  2. The Seventh Seal (1957)

  3. Persona (1966)

  4. Scenes From a Marriage (1973)

  5. Cries & Whispers (1972)

Runners-Up: Every other film Mr. Bergman ever made !!!

*points are given as follows: for numbered lists, first place recieves 5 points, second place recieves 4, third place 3, fourth place 2 and fifth place gets 1 point; for unumbered lists, each film will recieve 3 points; total points are then tallied up and a comprehensive Top 5 list is created


The Next Topic is:
Name The Top 5 Antonioni Films

e-mail me at kevynknox@thecinematheque.com with your picks for week #36,
no later than 6pm on Sunday, August 19, 2007.

HOME * REVIEWS * MIDTOWN * FESTIVALS * TOP 10 PROJECT * ESSAYS & ARTICLES * ODDS & ENDS * LINKS * CONTACT