Ingmar Bergman:Ingmar Bergman, who has died aged 89, was an undisputed colossus of world art cinema. From the 1940s, he directed more than 60 films, wrote even more and created some, like The Seventh Seal(1956-57), Wild Strawberries(1957) and Fanny and Alexander(1982), that were stunningly successful. He astonished people with his willingness to recognise cruelty, death and the torment of doubt.
From the late 1950s to the late 1970s, Bergman would have been on any film buff's list of great directors. Similarly, no critics' poll would have omitted from their list of greatest films either Wild Strawberriesor The Seventh Seal, which, with Smiles of a Summer Night(1955), made up a dazzling hat trick of films produced in less than three years. In his native Sweden, Bergman was also a prolific theatre director and, from 1963 to 1966, head of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
Following this success came a long period of self-doubt and seeming decline. In March 1983, after the return to form represented by Fanny and Alexander, he announced that he would not direct again. "I want peace. I don't have the strength any more, neither psychologically nor physically. And I hate the hoopla and the malice. Hell and damnation."
Of course, other works followed, some for television - After the Rehearsal(1983), The Blessed One(1985), a documentary about Fanny and Alexander(1986) and Karin's Face(1986), a short film about his mother. And there were works from his novels and screenplays, The Best Intentions (1991) and Sunday's Children(1992). There was also his autobiography, The Magic Lantern(1988), and Images, My Life in Film(1990).
Bergman wrote and directed some 35 feature films. He made other films credited only as director, and provided screenplays for Alf Sjoberg, Gustaf Molander, Alf Kjellin and Bille August.
The immaculate visual surface of his films was guaranteed by his loyalty to those great cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist. As an artist owing his origins to the severest aspects of Scandinavian culture - the theatre of Strindberg and the silent films of Victor Sjostrom - he was always happiest on home ground.
He stated his concerns in his introduction to Wild Strawberriesand had the intellect and vigorous film technique to carry out his aims: "I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it."
As he used cinema to examine - strip bare - life, he used life to examine cinema. Few directors have interwoven their persona and inner turmoil so powerfully as Bergman. His cinema was truly autobiographical, not simply in details and drama, but in its spiritual and artistic responses to marriage, the church, duplicity, illness, the nature of women, and death.
Bergman traced the obsession with film to his childhood when, aged 10, he acquired his first projector and a strip of film showing a girl waking in a field. Yet it seems to have been a childhood hardly known, let alone enjoyed. He noted: "I myself never felt young, only immature."
He created at least one film, The Silence(1962), concerned with childhood, and it is arguably his finest work.
Some of his demons sprang from his early years in a comfortably-off household in Uppsala. His father, a Lutheran pastor, physically punished his elder brother and was capable of publicly humiliating the younger boy for minor misdemeanours.
He rebelled against his upbringing, becoming a "vagabond", seeing films and working in the theatre. With Sweden neutral in the second World War, he was able to continue his studies and find work as a "script doctor" at the studios. He married Elsa Fisher, the first of his five wives, though the relationship did not last long.
In 1944, he co-wrote the screenplay for Frenzy, which then allowed him to turn to directing. In 1952 he directed the best of his early films, the autobiographical Summer with Monika. Sawdust and Tinsel(1953) marked the beginning of Bergman's maturity and shocked many with its seeming pessimism. Two years later, Smiles of a Summer Night- a stylish comedy of manners - changed his fortunes, proving a critical and financial success, and giving him the artistic freedom he needed.
But Bergman's reputation as a "gloomy Swede" was not dented for long, and subsequent films confirmed his seriousness. The Seventh Sealand Wild Strawberriesendorsed his stature. An Oscar for The Virgin Springin 1960 was echoed the following year when Through a Glass Darklywon best foreign film. Great works followed after The Silence, notably Persona(1965) and Cries and Whispers(1971).
However, Bergman was temporarily toppled from eminence in 1976 when he was arrested on alleged tax offences. Although subsequently cleared, he suffered a nervous breakdown and left Sweden for Germany, returning only in the mid-1980s.
The final phase of his directing career is notable for the magnificent Fanny and Alexander, shown in two versions - at 312 and 197 minutes. Arguably the most optimistic of his works, it was an international success and received four Oscars in 1983.
In 1998, after a film silence of 14 years, Bergman - then nearly 80 - allowed the premiere of a made-for-television work, The Presence of a Clown, to be shown at the Cannes film festival. Two television productions followed, Bildmakarna(2000) and Saraband(2003), his last film.
Eight children survive him; one son predeceased him.
Ernst Ingmar Bergman: born July 14th, 1918; died July 30th, 2007