Bergman's best

That's some list.. Many I want to see from there. Good to see Gycklarnas Afton getting some attention.

Top 20; favorite movies:
http://ymdb.forumcircle.com/viewtopic.php?t=13

Gycklarnas Afton is a good film, but not near Bergman's best. Bergman had not yet developed his own style with this film, and his influences are naked and in plain sight. Not that they are bad influences, not at all, Eisenstein and Dreyer make for fine models; but it is always a little hard to watch a young artist so uncovered.

The film has no major flaws, but by looking at Bergman's later films it is easy for me to see some things that could have made this film better. For instance a larger cast of main characters and more comedy like in 1955's "Smiles of a Summer Night". And, perhaps, shrewder editing, particularly in the silent sequence in which Frost retrieves his wife. It could have been a much more powerful scene if it hadn't run on for so long, and if it wasn't quite so redundant.

In the end this is a good film, but not nearly as entertaining or profound as some of his later work. I rank it somewhere like this:


Virgin Spring
Fanny and Alexander
Smiles of a Summer Night
Through a Glass Darkly
Scenes from a Marriage
Winter Light
Seventh Seal
Wild Strawberries
Sawdust and Tinsel

The Naked Night was the first Bergman I was immensely impressed with ( as opposed to depressed and confused with many of his other films) in my early exposure with him did. Granted it's a powerfully depressing journey but the power wins out and you leave the theatre somewhat feeling stirred, moved and rewarded.

I know the praise really began to rain down heavy on Bergman the more nebulous (Persona on through the sixties) he got but Night is rich in expressionistic imagery with concrete as opposed to abstract symbolism that unlike Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal lightens the heavy hand with powerfully desperate and unsentimental performances by the cast.

It's been well over a decade since I last saw it and i've begun to warm up to (understand a touch more) of his later works but outside a few close-ups of a desperate Liv Ullman in many of his films The Naked Night remains my favorite with the possibility of it surpassing Fellin's similar La Strada in my totally uninfluential sightless and soundless ratings upon next reviewing.

While we are on the topic of Fellini, Kriege I found your distaste for Amacord interesting. I like it in many ways but it is evident that when aging masters do victory laps at the tail end of their careers they get a pass from critics. Amacord is in many ways sentimental claptrap to those that have reference of Fellini's earlier works and I believe you take the same tact about the well produced bore Fanny and Alexander. How do you feel about Kurasawa's Ran? I'm hovering. The list of directors who ran out of gas by 65 is endless save for Luis Bunuel.