Ingmar Bergman

Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter.

Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, his films have been described as "profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul".

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on 14 July 1918, the son of nurse Karin (née Åkerblom) and Lutheran minister (and later chaplain to the King of Sweden) Erik Bergman.

His mother was of Walloon descent.

The Bergman family was originally from Järvsö.

On his father's side, Bergman was a descendant of the noble Bröms, Ehrenskiöld, and Stockenström clergy families of Finnish, German, and Swedish origin.

His father also descended from the German noble families Flach (noble family) and de Frese introduced at the Swedish Riddarhuset.

Bergman's paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were cousins, making his parents second cousins.

In 1934, aged 16, he was sent to Germany to spend the summer holidays with family friends.

He attended a Nazi rally in Weimar at which he saw Adolf Hitler.

He later wrote in Laterna Magica (The Magic Lantern) about the visit to Germany, describing how the German family had put a portrait of Hitler on the wall by his bed, and that "for many years, I was on Hitler's side, delighted by his success and saddened by his defeats".

Bergman commented that "Hitler was unbelievably charismatic. He electrified the crowd. ... The Nazism I had seen seemed fun and youthful."

Bergman did two five-month stretches of mandatory military service in Sweden.

He later reflected, "When the doors to the concentration camps were thrown open ... I was suddenly ripped of my innocence."

Bergman enrolled at Stockholm University College (later renamed Stockholm University) in 1937, to study art and literature.

He spent most of his time involved in student theatre and became a "genuine movie addict".

At the same time, a romantic involvement led to a physical confrontation with his father which resulted in a break in their relationship which lasted for many years.

Although he did not graduate from the university, he wrote a number of plays and an opera, and became an assistant director at a local theatre.

In a 1944 letter concerning the film Torment (sometimes known as Frenzy), which sparked debate on the condition of Swedish high schools (and which Bergman had written), the school's principal Henning Håkanson wrote, among other things, that Bergman had been a "problem child".

Bergman wrote in a response that he had strongly disliked the emphasis on homework and testing in his formal schooling.

Some of his most acclaimed works include The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966) and Fanny and Alexander (1982), which were included in the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time.

Most of his films were set in Sweden, and many of his films from 1961 onward were filmed on the island of Fårö.

He forged a creative partnership with his cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist.

Bergman also had a theatrical career that included periods as Leading Director of Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm and of Germany's Residenztheater in Munich.

He directed more than 170 plays.

Among his company of actors were Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom and Max von Sydow.

Although raised in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman later stated that he lost his faith at age eight, and came to terms with this fact while making Winter Light in 1962.

His interest in theatre and film began early; at the age of nine, he traded a set of tin soldiers for a magic lantern.

Within a year, he had created a private world by playing with this toy in which he felt completely at home.

He fashioned his own scenery, marionettes, and lighting effects and gave puppet productions of Strindberg plays in which he spoke all the parts."

Bergman attended the Palmgren School as a teenager.

His school years were unhappy, and he remembered them unfavourably in later years.

He was also ranked No. 8 on the magazine's 2002 "Greatest Directors of All Time" list.

Bergman directed more than 60 films and documentaries, most of which he also wrote, for both cinema releases and television screenings.

On his mother's side, he was descended from Dutch merchant Paul Calwagen, who left Holland for Sweden in the 17th century; Paul's Dutch-Swedish wife, Maria van der Hagen, was a descendant of the court painter Laurens van der Plas.

Bergman's mother was also a descendant of the noble Tigerschiöld and Weinholz families, as well as the Bure (noble family) family.

Bergman grew up with his older brother Dag and younger sister Margareta surrounded by religious imagery and discussion.

His father was a conservative parish minister with strict ideas of parenting.

Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting himself.

"While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang, or listened", Ingmar wrote in his autobiography Laterna Magica, "I devoted my interest to the church's mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the coloured sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls. There was everything that one's imagination could desire—angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans..."