Scenes from a marriage from Ingmar Bergman.
Sadly I could only watch the theatrical version and not the longer version he made for TV.
It's a masterpiece.
It's a film that should be studied in every film school: the film is almost entirely two people talking, with very few change of locations, which of course is supposed to be a nightmare to shoot in an interesting way. And yet, there isn't a single boring shot. The camera movement, the blocking, it always is part of the story.
I'm in awe of what Bergman accomplished in the segments 3, 4 and 5. There's a 5-6 minutes long shot in the fourth segment, where every frame is perfectly blocked, with a very long moment where the camera is very close to Ullman, the kind of shot that is so hard to prepare and play, and that Bergman (and Nykvist) casually inserts in the middle of a long shot! He mixes the intimacy of cinema and the continuous movements of theatre like it's easy to do...
In addition of being a genius at directing, Bergman is also an incredible writer to study the deepest corners of our minds. He moves easily between different themes that he can treat each with the ambiguity they deserve.
Sadly I could only watch the theatrical version and not the longer version he made for TV.
It's a masterpiece.
It's a film that should be studied in every film school: the film is almost entirely two people talking, with very few change of locations, which of course is supposed to be a nightmare to shoot in an interesting way. And yet, there isn't a single boring shot. The camera movement, the blocking, it always is part of the story.
I'm in awe of what Bergman accomplished in the segments 3, 4 and 5. There's a 5-6 minutes long shot in the fourth segment, where every frame is perfectly blocked, with a very long moment where the camera is very close to Ullman, the kind of shot that is so hard to prepare and play, and that Bergman (and Nykvist) casually inserts in the middle of a long shot! He mixes the intimacy of cinema and the continuous movements of theatre like it's easy to do...
In addition of being a genius at directing, Bergman is also an incredible writer to study the deepest corners of our minds. He moves easily between different themes that he can treat each with the ambiguity they deserve.