God and the Devil

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 17 MAR 2025

Film historian Cowie (Japanese Cinema) provides a prosaic account of the life of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, who was born in 1918. Bergman's upbringing in Uppsala was marked by familial tensions, Cowie notes, describing how his older brother once "had to be restrained from beating to death." While attending Stockholm University, Bergman became interested in directing theater. One of his original plays caught the attention of a movie producer who enlisted him to join the production house Svensk Filmindustri's screenwriting department, where he was encouraged to develop his directing skills by tackling projects that the house's established directors passed over. He rose to prominence within Sweden with such hits as 1952's Waiting Women, but it was 1957's The Seventh Seal that made him a darling of world cinema. Amusing tidbits about Bergman's exacting directorial style are peppered throughout, as when Cowie recounts how Bergman once recruited Shame star Max von Sydow to strip leaves from trees to sell the illusion of a bomb-stricken landscape. Unfortunately, readers must wade through lengthy plot summaries to reach such nuggets, and the scholarly analysis of how Bergman's obsession with good and evil manifests in such works as The Virgin Spring and Fanny and Alexander feels less than revelatory. It's an adequate biography that's lamentably short on panache. Photos.