Two giants die the same day.
MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI
Sept. 29, 1912-July 30, 2007
In the 1960s, Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni was one of the most famous filmmakers in the world. Antonioni was a difficult director who eschewed clarity in his plotting and character development. Instead, he searched for deeper meanings about the human condition. His work is the subject of frequent argument; where some people see profundity, others find unnecessary opacity. Antonioni's most well-known film is 1966's
Blow Up
, a drama set in London about a womanizing mod photographer who comes to believe that a picture he took of a couple also contains, in the background, evidence of murder. But his most critically admired and thoroughly studied work is a trilogy that explores alienation: 1959's
L'Avventura
, 1960's
La Notte
and 1962's
L'Eclisse
. In 1975, he made
The Passenger
, starring Jack Nicholson as a reporter in Africa posing as a gunrunner. These are films that are worth watching, and arguing over, yet again.
INGMAR BERGMAN
July 14, 1918-July 30, 2007
Many believe Ingmar Bergman to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest filmmaker in cinema history. The Swedish director began at age 9 with a magic lantern and marionettes, and burst through to film fame in 1956 with
Smiles of a Summer Night
. He quickly followed up with four more masterpieces:
The Seventh Seal
and
Wild Strawberries
in 1957,
The Magician
in 1958 and
The Virgin Spring
in 1960. All of these films won awards at a variety of European film festivals.
The Virgin Spring
, about a rape and its aftermath, won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and Bergman won Oscars in this category twice more-in 1972 for
Through a Glass Darkly
and in 1982 for
Fanny and Alexander
. But the most famous images in Bergman's oeuvre are from
The Seventh Seal's
chess battle between a knight (Max von Sydow) and Death (Bengt Ekerot), who is stalking him.
