Three Scenes With Ingmar Bergman by Jörn Donner

In Jörn Donner’s Three Scenes With Ingmar Bergman (1976) we get closer to the mind and work, the private and personal side of the great director who passed away last summer. The documentary focuses on Bergman answering questions by Donner and talking about his relationship with his parents, religion and filmmaking. Donner and Bergman repeated this same kind of interview approach in 1998 in Donner’s Ingmar Bergman on Life and Work. For those to whom Bergman represents the ultimate Scandinavian gloom and darkness, these documentaries might actually broaden their perspective. Many books and films have been made about Bergman, but since Donner shared a special relationship with him, being not only a producer of Fanny and Alexander but also in his youth the one who had the guts to rebel against the master, his films and his book (Djävulens Ansikte/The personal vision of Ingmar Bergman) remain among the most interesting examinations of the director whom many hail as the most important of our times.

Atso Pärnänen