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| The '40s work comes to a peak with what now seems the clearer early formal-thematic Bergman signatures of 1949's Prison, with its nihilistic brooding and harsh expressionism. | |
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| However, it is with Summer Interlude (1951) that we find the filmmaker's first wholly masterful utterance. | |
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| The Seventh Seal is Bergman's most famous work, much pastiched by Monty Python, Woody Allen, and in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001, via a metaphysical cowboy, one of his many Bergman references) | |
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| Its beautiful high-contrast images of medieval Sweden and von Sydow's anguished performance made for icons existentialist cinema that resonated deeply with a world at the height of the Cold War. | |
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| Fanny and Alexander was Bergman's (and Sweden's) most expensive film, with lavish set design and cinematography winning two of the film's four Oscars. | |
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| Yet despite its ostentatious scale, the film's best scenes still feature intimate spaces and interactions, and the television version in particular is more Bergmanesque than the work at first appears. | |
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