Ingmar Bergman

UPDATE: Wow, we've lost two major filmmakers in less than 24 hours. Liam just informed me that Michelangelo Antonioni died last night in Rome at the age of 94.

If I'm Jean-Luc Godard, I'm getting out my rosary.

And though he wasn't a world-renowned filmmaker, Bill Walsh was one of the greatest football coaches of the modern era, leading the San Francisco 49ers to 3 Super Bowl victories. He died yesterday as well, after a long battle with lukemia.

I feel like I'm suddenly running an obiturary blog.

UPDATE 2: Yes, Steve, Tom Snyder also died - but on Sunday, July 29, not the more fashionable date of Monday, July 30.

If anyone knows of other famous or not so famous people who died yesterday - or Sunday - or this morning - please let me know. Unfortunately, I checked and deadpeople.blogspot.com is already taken. I'll have to consider another name for the new obit blog.

I'm reminded of other dates in history when several famous people passed away: November 22, 1963, for example, when John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley all died. And the Big One in the literary world: April 23, 1616, when both Shakespeare AND Cervantes stopped writing for good.

UPDATE 3: It's been confirmed - Andrei Tarkovsky and Alfred Hitchcock have apparently died as well. I'm not sure if that happened Sunday, Monday or sometime earlier. (Strange, I recently sat through one of Tarkovsky's films and I could've sworn it went on forever. But evidently, he was forced to stop directing the movie at some point.)

I'm also getting word that Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder are not doing well. More on that story as it develops.

UPDATE 4: Michel Serrault, French actor (Diabolique, Joyeux Noël, La Cage aux Folles, Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud), is dead. He passed away of cancer on Sunday, July 29, 2007.

ORIGINAL POST: In my mind, there have always been three Titans of Film: Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman. Federico died in 1993, Kurosawa in 1998, and now the last of the great ones has gone on to that beautiful Cinemateque in the sky. Bergman was 89 and died this morning at his home on the island of Faro.

The Seventh Seal was one of my earliest experiences with foreign film. It was around 1980, and I saw it in a large auditorium classroom on the University of Texas campus. It blew my little 17-year old mind away. I just didn't know cinema could do those kinds of things. Death playing chess with a medieval knight! How cool was that?! Film suddenly seemed like it could reach the great heights of other art forms. The movie remains one of my all-time favorites.

I also love The Magician and Fanny & Alexander.

Good-bye Mr. Bergman. Tack så mycket.