7/28/2019 bergman, ingmar - on tarkovsky.rtf
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On Tarkovsky
Ingmar Bergman on Andrei Tarkovsky
My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle.
Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys
of which had, until then, never beengiven to me. It was a room I
had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully
atease.
I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was expressing what I
had always wanted to say withoutknowing how.
Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new
language, true to the nature of film, as itcaptures life as a
reflection, life as a dream.Ingmar Bergman solves a problem...
Suddenly I have the solution: a tracking shot. A tracking shot
round the actors, past the extras, tracking.Tarkovsky is always
tracking round in every scene, the camera flying in all directions.
I actually think it anobjectionable technique, but it solved my
problem, time passes... (Laterna Magica, page 173)Ingmar Bergman on
cinema...
When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky
is the greatest of them all. He moves withsuch naturalness in the
room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow?
He is aspectator, capable of staging his visions in the most
unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. Allmy life I
have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so
naturally. Only a few timeshave I managed to creep inside. Most of
my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure -
THESERPENT'S EGG, THE TOUCH, FACE TO FACE and so on.
Fellini, Kurosawa and Bunuel move in the same fields as
Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, butexpired, suffocated by his
own tediousness. Melies was always there without having to think
about it. He
was a magician by profession.
Film as dream, film as music. (Laterna Magica, page 73)
