Ingmar Bergman
Magician and Prophet
by Marc Gervais
Average rating:
0 | rating | ![]() |
0 | rating | ![]() |
0 | rating | ![]() |
0 | rating | ![]() |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Ingmar Bergman has long been revered as a master craftsman of the cinema, a film poet who has created works that are intensely revealing of himself while resonating mysteriously and powerfully with his audience. In Ingmar Bergman Marc Gervais explores what has largely been taken for granted - how Bergman achieves this cinematic magic through his specific choices in the use of film language and the texturing and structuring of his images, sounds, and rhythms.
Gervais shows also how Bergman's work resonates in a much broader sphere than the personal. His films, which are without equal in the history of cinema in quality, consistency, and relevance, are crucial moments in an ongoing conversation with western culture in its frenetic evolution since World War II.
Gervais situates Bergman within the tensions of modernism and the western tradition that have manifested themselves in the twentieth century from existentialism, through deconstruction, and into postmodernism. Bergman's films are experienced as incarnations, meditations, explorations, and aesthetic objects that reflect, comment on, conflict with, or embrace the movements that produced them.
About the Author:
Marc Gervais is professor of film and culture in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. Long involved professionally in various aspects of the media, he is the author of the first book on Pier-Paolo Pasolini.
Press Reviews:
"One acquires a clear and exhaustive grasp of Bergman's life-long film output - and is left stunned by this creative realisation, awesome in its quantity, variety, and relevance ... [Gervais] offers the reader moments of delight similar to actual watching of Bergman films." Janine Langan, William J. Bennett Professor of Christianity and Culture, St Michael's College at the University of Toronto.
"[Gervais] offers many fresh insights into Bergman's work ... a real treat ... an outstanding piece of work!" Jerry H. Gill, professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religious Studies, The College of St Rose
See the publisher website: McGill-Queen's University Press
See the complete filmography of Ingmar Bergman on the website: IMDB ...
> Books with the same or similar title:
> On a related topic:
Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus (2025)
Film Cultures and International Reception
Dir. Jono Van Belle, Fernando Ramos Arenas and María Paz Peirano
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
God and the Devil (2025)
The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman
by Peter Cowie
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman at the Crossroads (2024)
Between Theory and Practice
Dir. Maaret Koskinen
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Films of Ingmar Bergman (2022)
From Freud to Lacan and Beyond
Dir. Vanessa Sinclair
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
The Ingmar Bergman Archives (2016)
Dir. Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
The Demons of Modernity (2016)
Ingmar Bergman and European Cinema
by John Orr
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Sonatas, Screams, and Silence (2015)
Music and Sound in the Films of Ingmar Bergman
by Alexis Luko
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman