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Ab August bietet das Kino filmkunst 66 jeden Sonntag ausgewählte Werke der Meister der Filmkunst der 1920er bis 1960er Jahre.

Das Kino Filmkunst 66 präsentiert ab August sonntags „Frühe Meister der Filmkunst“ (Credit: filmkunst 66)

Kuratiert von Theaterleiter Klaus Stawecki bietet das Kino filmkunst 66 ab August sonntags ausgewählte Werke der frühen Meister der Filmkunst aus den 1920er bis 1960er Jahren. Wie das Kino heute mitteilt, wolle man damit „sowohl erfahrenen CineastInnen (die viele bedeutende Filme lange nicht mehr im Kino sehen konnten) als auch interessierten Newcomern eine Möglichkeit zu bieten, sich Beispiele der Filmgeschichte auf der Leinwand anzusehen“.

Beim Angebot wolle man sich am Alphabet nach den Nachnamen der jeweiligen Meister orientieren, heißt es in der Mitteilung weiter. Und so macht am 4. August Michelangelo Antonionis „Die mit der Liebe spielen“ den Auftakt zu der Filmreihe. Am 11. und 18. August folgen mit „Liebe 1962“ und „Blow Up“ zwei weitere Filme von Michelangelo Antonioni. Am 25. August,...

Ingmar Bergman is the Oscar-winning Swedish auteur who helped bring international cinema into the American art houses with his stark, brooding dramas. But how many of his titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at 25 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Bergman started off as a screenwriter before moving into directing. His early hits “Summer with Monika” (1953), “Sawdust and Tinsel” (1953) and “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1955) helped make him a favorite amongst American audiences hungry for world cinema.

He hit his stride in 1957 with a pair of noteworthy titles: “Wild Strawberries” and “The Seventh Seal.” Both films dealt with the absence of God and the inevitability of mortality — the former concerning an aging professor (Victor Sjostrom) coming to terms with his life, the latter focusing on a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) playing a game of chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot...

“Contempt returns to the sender, and that is how it is,” Catherine Breillat wrote in her essay on Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust And Tinsel.

Frauke Finsterwalder’s razor-sharp and exquisitely stylish Sisi & I (with Tanja Hausner’s eminently tempting and chronology defying costumes), stars the glorious combination of Susanne Wolff (Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx) as Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, with Sandra Hüller as Irma Countess of Sztáray, her lady-in-waiting. The extraordinary supporting cast includes the two protagonists’ mothers, Sibylle Canonica as Marie Countess of Sztáray and Angela Winkler (Volker Schlöndorff’s Oscar-winning The Tin Drum) as Ludovika of Bavaria, plus Georg Friedrich (Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini) as Sisi’s playful cousin, Archduke Viktor of Austria. Tom Rhys...

Above: 1962 poster for The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer.The extraordinary German graphic designer Hans Hillmann (1925–2014) should need no introduction to readers of this column: I’ve written about him on a number of occasions and anyone who loves movie poster design should know his name. For a long time, however, it has been hard to find a lot of his work online, certainly not all in one place. For a while I had entertained the idea of trying to collect images of every single movie poster he ever designed and ranking them from best to least-best. But I knew that even if I could gather together his more than 160 posters that I would tie myself in knots trying to put them in any kind of order.Thankfully author and publisher Jens Müller has done half of the work for me. Müller had first met Hillmann when he curated...

The Danish star of The Celebration and many others discusses what seeing America only through movies when she was growing up.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Gremlins (1984)

Piranha (1978)

The ’Burbs (1989)

Matinee (1993)

Hollywood Boulevard (1976)

The Celebration (1998)

On The Border (1998)

The Idiots (1998)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Nutty Professor (1963)

Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

Deep Throat (1972)

American Graffiti (1972)

Sexual Freedom In Denmark (1970)

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1967)

The Godfather (1972)

Stripes (1981)

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Faces (1968)

Taking Off (1971)

Gloria (1980)

Gloria (1999)

The Biggest Heroes (1996)

Nashville (1975)

That Time of Year (2018)

Psycho (1960)

All That Jazz (1979)

California Split (1974)

The Player (1992)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Network (1976)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Heathers (1988)

Fame (1980)

Judy (2019)

Star 80 (1983)

Lenny (1974)

Over The Edge (1979)

Rumble Fish (1983)

The Outsiders (1983)

Footloose (1983)

Raging Bull (1980)

Running On Empty (1988)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Superman (1978)

Superman II (1980)

On The Waterfront (1954)

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Planet of the Apes...

Ingmar Bergman would’ve celebrated his 101st birthday on July 14, 2019. The Oscar-winning Swedish auteur helped bring international cinema into the American art houses with his stark, brooding dramas. But how many of his titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 25 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Bergman started off as a screenwriter before moving into directing. His early hits “Summer with Monika” (1953), “Sawdust and Tinsel” (1953) and “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1955) helped make him a favorite amongst American audiences hungry for world cinema.

SEEOscar Best Director Gallery: Every Winner In Academy Award History

He hit his stride in 1957 with a pair of noteworthy titles: “Wild Strawberries” and “The Seventh Seal.” Both films dealt with the absence of God and the inevitability of mortality — the former concerning an aging professor (Victor Sjostrom) coming to terms with his life,...

Stars: Åke Grönberg, Harriet Andersson, Erik Strandmark, Hasse Ekman, Anders Ek | Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman

In Skane, a county in southern Sweden, the bedraggled Alberti Circus caravan trundles through the rain and mud. They’ve had to leave half their costumes behind and they’re running out of food. Leader Albert (Åke Grönberg) is seriously considering shooting their performing bear for food. They stop off in a small town, where potential respite comes in the form of the Sjuberg Theatre Group. But it will also create a rift between Albert and his young mistress, Anne (Harriet Andersson). Albert’s wife and kids live nearby and he wants to drop them a visit. Gripped by jealousy, Anne hooks up with a lascivious actor, Frans (Hasse Ekman), from the Sjuberg troupe.

The fallout is toxic. It turns out both Albert and Anne just want to leave the nomadic circus life and settle down.

As John Simon’s insert essay “The Lower Depths” asserts in Criterion’s Blu-ray re-release of Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 masterpiece Sawdust and Tinsel, the title was something of a turning point for the Swedish cinematic titan, who had yet to claim the international reputation he would soon come to be known for. Previous titles Summer Interlude (1951) and Waiting Women (1953) had recently found Bergman compete for Venice’s Golden Lion, and while 1947’s A Ship to India had been part of the Cannes program, it was 1955’s Smiles of a Summer Night which gave him his first crack at the Palme d’Or, while 1957’s Wild Strawberries would take home the Golden Bear in Berlin.…...

Ingmar Bergman’s ‘sad comedy’ finds desperation and adultery in his favorite milieu, the theater. He also gets to contrast the self-important thespians with those dubious circus nomads, even as both groups are shunned by civilian society.

Sawdust and Tinsel

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 412

1953 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. / Gycklarnas afton / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 18, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Ake Grönberg, Harriet Andersson, Hasse Ekman, Anders Ek, Gudrun Brost, Annika Tretow, Erik Strandmark, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Curt Löwgren, Kiki.

Cinematography: Hilding Bladh, Sven Nykvist

Film Editor: Carl-Olov Skeppstedt

Original Music: Karl-Birger Blomdahl

Produced by Rune Waldekranz

Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Criterion just issued a monster gift box of their entire collection of Ingmar Bergman films on Blu-ray, but they’re also continuing with single releases of the Swedish maestro’s classic titles. Step back before 1957 or so, and one will find more variety of tone in Bergman’s output.

Tomorrow is the centenary of the birth of one of cinema’s greatest directors, Ingmar Bergman, and to celebrate, The Criterion Collection has announced of their most expansive releases ever. This November, they will release Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, a 39-film box set comprising nearly all of his work, including 18 films never before released by Criterion. Curated akin to a film festival, the set features Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Films, with many double features in between. The set also features 11 introductions and over five hours of interviews with the director himself, six making-of documentaries, a 248-page book, and much more.

As we await for its November 20 release, check out an overview from Criterion below, as well as the box art, the trailer, and the full list of films, in curated order. One can also see much more about each release and the special features on the official site.

With the...

Above: 1960 Us first release one sheet for A Lesson in Love (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1954).Starting on February 7, The Best Show in Town may well be Film Forum’s Centennial Retrospective of the gargantuan six-decade oeuvre of Ingmar Bergman. 47 films over five weeks, 40 of them brand new digital restorations. Usually in these circumstances I gather as many posters as I can find from a filmmaker's career, but collecting posters for all of Bergman’s work would be a monumental task. And so I’ve decided to cut to the chase and select my ten favorite posters for his films.Most American posters for Bergman’s films—especially those from the 60s and 70s—are unusually wordy and quote-heavy, relying on critical acclaim to sell the latest product from the master. But, as much a visual stylist as a cerebral provocateur, Bergman has inspired many poster artists to great heights over the years.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

The Accountant (Gavin O’Connor)

That The Accountant is written by Bill Dubuque, the same man who gave us The Judge, makes so much sense, and about halfway through it becomes clear how far this film’s reach will exceed its grasp. Similar to the aforementioned Robert Downey Jr.-starrer from a couple of years back, The Accountant, starring Ben Affleck and directed by Gavin O’Connor, wants to be about everything.

Above: 1968 Hans Hillmann poster for Shadows (John Cassavetes, USA, 1959).

There is an exhibition of the great German graphic designer Hans Hillmann currently running at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. Devoted entirely to Hillmann’s film posters from 1952 to 1974, the show, called The Title is Continued in the Picture, runs through the 1st of September and I’m sorry that I didn’t know about it sooner. But for those of us who can’t make it to the Ruhr in the next three weeks, the website Kunst + Film has posted a wonderful, almost-as-good-as-being-there video of the show.

The revelation of the video for me is the size of that Seven Samurai poster. Where most of Hillmann’s film posters are 33" x 23" (slightly smaller than a Us one-sheet), and the Cassavetes above is only 16.5" x 23", that glorious Seven Samurai is 93" x 132", or 11 feet wide.

While many of Hillmann’s witty,...

Chicago – “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is a romantic comedy so lightweight that it threatens to float off into the ether. It has perhaps the least gripping title since Ingmar Bergman’s “Sawdust and Tinsel,” which is strange since the rest of the production reeks of commercial calculation. Yet the film is based on Paul Torday’s book of the same name, so the studio must have considered the title marketable.

There’s perhaps no film more difficult to make than a good crowd-pleaser. It’s easy to manufacture phony uplift. The trick is for the director to guide an audience’s emotions in a way where they don’t feel manipulated. That’s where the element of surprise comes into play. If the audience is perched on the edge of their seats, while delighting in the character’s increasingly loony plight, they will likely embrace whatever the script has in store for them.

Thanks to the home entertainment team at Artificial Eye, we have Three Blu-ray copies of the upcoming Classic Bergman 5 disc box set (released on 28 May) to give away to our world cinema-loving. The box set includes five Bergman classics: It Rains on our Love, A Ship Bound for India, Sawdust and Tinsel, Dreams and So Close to Life. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue.

Read more »...

Studio Ghibli, London

If you've never stepped into the universes of Hayao Miyazaki and co, it's time you discovered what you're missing. These aren't just some of the best animated children's movies ever made; they'e some of the best movies full stop. The vibrant fantasy worlds, airborne adventures and noble junior heroes of Studio Ghibli's movies fascinate kids, but they're richer, more challenging and more psychedelically epic than most of what passes for grown-up fantasy. Avatar looks like Mr Men compared to, say, Princess Mononoke – which deals with similar themes with considerably more nuance. Having first championed them 10 years ago, the Barbican brings back Ghibli classics, from Laputa: Castle In The Sky and My Neighbour Totoro (the best one for young viewers), right up to previews of their latest, Arrietty, a version of The Borrowers.

Barbican Screen EC2, Wed to 31 Jul

Liverpool Arabic Fim Festival

Partly as a result of the Arab Spring,...

Danish director Susanne Bier ("Brødre," "Things We Lost In the Fire") will direct a four-part mini about the life of Swedish wirter/director/actor Ingmar Bergman for Sveriges Television (SvT) and the series will also be made into a feature film for theatrical release. Shooting starts in fall of 2011. SvT will produce. Gunnar Carlsson will serve as an executive producer and Christian Wikander as producer. Pic is budgeted at $12 million and is one of the most expensive projects SvT has ever taken part in. According to Variety, the mini is written by Swedish author Henning Mankell (married to Bergman's daughter Eva) and the first completed the first two episodes. The first is "Frenzy" and the second "Sawdust and Tinsel" - named after Bergman films.

Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director considered one of the most influential and acclaimed filmmakers of modern cinema, died at his home in Faro, Sweden, on Monday; he was 89. The death was announced by the Swedish news agency TT and confirmed by Bergman's daughter, Eva, and Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, though an official cause of death was not yet given. Nominated for nine Academy Awards throughout his career and honored with the Irving G. Thalberg award in 1971, Bergman was cited as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, with his bleak, unsparing yet highly emotional explorations of the human psyche and its relation to life, sex, and death, in both highly symbolic and intensely personal films; he most notably influenced Woody Allen, who considered him the greatest of filmmakers. His images ranged from the stark black-and-white of films like The Seventh Seal to those awash in dreadful reds such as Cries and Whispers and the holiday warmth of Fanny and Alexander, his last film for the cinema. Born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1918, Bergman was the son of a Lutheran minister, and religious imagery as well as the tumultuous relationship between his parents would pervade his work. Though growing up in an extremely strict and devout family, Bergman lost his faith at an early age and grappled with the concept of the existence of God in many of his early films. Bergman discovered the magic of imagery at the age of nine with a magic lantern, for which he would create his own characters and scenery, and this love of light and images brought him to the theater world after a brief stint at the University of Stockholm. Bergman worked in both theater and film throughout the 1940s, as part of the script department of Svensk Filmindustri and as a director and producer for numerous small theater companies. His first script to be produced was the 1944 film Torment, and began as a director with small movies that allowed him to hone his craft; among his notable earlier works were Prison, Summer Interlude, and Sawdust and Tinsel.

Bergman came to the fore of the international cinematic community with the 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, his classic melancholy comedy about the romantic entanglements of three 19th century couples during a weekend at a country estate. The film propelled him to stardom and won him a a Cannes Film Festival award for "Best Poetic Humor" (it was also later adapted by Stephen Sondheim into the musical A Little Night Music). He established his legacy and reputation with his next two films: The Seventh Seal, featuring the now-iconic imagery of Death playing chess with a tortured medieval knight (Max Von Sydow), and Wild Strawberries, the study of an aged professor (played by Victor Sjostrom) revisiting his youth and his darkest fears as he drives through the Swedish countryside. Both films were phenomenal critical and box office successes, with Wild Strawberries earning Bergman his first Oscar nomination, for Best Screenplay. Bergman's The Virgin Spring, the grim fable about two parents exacting revenge on their daughter's murderers, won the Best Foreign Language film Oscar in 1961. He followed up that film with a trilogy of films -- Through a Glass Darkly (another Foreign Language Film Oscar winner), Winter Light and The Silence -- in which he grappled most powerfully with his lack of faith and belief in the power of love.

Making as many failures as he did successes, Bergman found favor with a number of films throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including the now-famous Persona, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers (a nominee for Best Picture), Scenes from a Marriage, The Magic Flute, and Autumn Sonata. Throughout his films he used an ensemble of actors, most notably Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman, with whom he had a personal relationship and a child. He also almost always worked with the legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who won two Oscars for Cries and Whispers and 1982's Fanny and Alexander. It was that latter film that Bergman declared to be his final cinematic work, an intimate portrait of brother and sister set in early 20th century Sweden that was originally conceived as a four part TV film, and was released in the US at a truncated 188 minutes. It won four Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film. Though he officially "retired" from the film industry after Fanny and Alexander, Bergman made films for Swedish television, continued to direct theatrically (including a version of Hamlet in Swedish that traveled to the US) and wrote screenplays that were filmed by other directors, including Bille August, Bergman's son Daniel, and actress and former lover Liv Ullman. His last work as director was Saraband, a revisitation of the two lead characters (Ullman and Jospehson) from Scenes from a Marriage. Bergman was married five times, and his fifth wife, Ingrid von Rosen, passed away in 1995. He is survived by nine children from his past marriages and relationships. At press time, a funeral date had not yet been set. --Mark Englehart, IMDb staff...

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sven Nykvist, who was legendary director Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer of choice, has died. He was 83. Nykvist died on Wednesday at a nursing home where he was being treated for aphasia, a form of dementia, according to his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist. The film-maker won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography for the Bergman films Cries And Whispers in 1973 and Fanny And Alexander in 1982. Nykvist's sense of lighting and camera work made him a favorite of Bergman's after their first collaboration on the 1954 movie Sawdust And Tinsel, which began a partnership that lasted nearly 30 years. He also worked on fellow Swede Lasse Hallstrom's film What's Eating Gilbert Grape and did several movies with Bergman fan Woody Allen. Nykvist's wife Ulrika died in 1982. In addition to his son, he is survived by his daughter-in-law, Helena Berlin, and grandchildren Sonia Sondell and Marilde Nykvist.