ffoulkes wrote:
> Rich Clancey wrote:
>
>> In rec.arts.books LMC Society <aegisigea@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>> persona
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, I sat through this during the original heyday, and it
>> struck me as being a turgidly paced depiction of a bunch of bored
>> depressed rich people who spend way too much time thinking about how
>> bored and depressed they are. The rest of the people in the theater
>> seemed to think they were in the presence of something terribly
>> profound, but I'm still convinced that it was all about Bergman
>> needing to add to his reputation as being one heck of an im****tant
>> serious guy.
>
>
> It's Bergman's Swedishness thaat gets to me.
> His films - and, I imagine, the man himself -
> are quite bereft of humor, always excepting
> the colorful (in every sense)
>
> *Fanny & Alexander*.
Colorfully black and white? Of course "The Serpent's Egg"
was in color. Circa 1977, Bergman told of being dragged
to a Hitler Youth rally when he was a teenage exchange
student in Germany, and confessed to doing a Heil
Hitler stiff-arm. Whether it was merely to placate
his host family, I was dismayed to read it, perhaps
too young (then in my early 30s) to appreciate that
a middle-aged adult is not accountable for a singular
lapse of judgement committted at 16 that hurt
mainly himself.
But isn't Swedishness a condition shared by
many other people from Uppsala? You don't even have
to be from there to get it. Jean Sibelius had it.
Think what Americaness is to a European awed
that a society as advanced as the United States
would permit a George W. Bush to hatch.
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