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Perhaps you remember The Dove, a 1974 short film parodying the works of Ingmar Bergman. Directed by George Coe and Anthony Lover, the film pays loving, playful and humorous homage to Bergman’s distinctive style, themes and iconic imagery.
The film plots follows a young girl named Inga and her existential journey as she deals with the complexities of life, death and relationships. The film is presented in black and white, with dramatic lighting and intense close-ups, and uses subtitles, mimicking the format of many of Bergman’s classic works.
The film humorously exaggerates the existential themes found in Bergman’s work, such as the contemplation of death and the struggle with inner demons. Characters engage in exaggeratedly serious and philosophical dialogue about life and mortality.
The Dove uses pseudo-Swedish language with English subtitles and employs surreal and symbolic imagery reminiscent of Bergman’s films. The dove itself becomes a central symbol, parodying the use of symbolic animals and objects in Bergman’s work. The film also features archetypal characters often seen in Bergman’s films, such as the brooding intellectual, the innocent young woman and the stern, philosophical older man. These characters engage in melodramatic interactions that highlight the absurdity of their existential struggles.
For audiences familiar with Bergman’s films, The Dove provides a delightful and clever take on the director’s well-known tropes and themes.
Bergman’s movies contained some of the most powerful, evocative imagines in cinematic history.
There is the image, in The Seventh Seal (1957), of a knight, playing chess with death. The stark black-and-white cinematography and the surreal setting served as a haunting visual metaphor for the human condition and the film’s central themes: the inevitability of death, existential dread and the quest for life’s meaning.
In Wild Strawberries, also from 1957, there was a dream sequence in which the elderly professor encounters a coffin containing his own body. It is deeply unsettling. This image represents the professor’s confrontation with his own mortality and his regrets over his past. The surreal and nightmarish quality of the dream underscores the film’s exploration of memory, time and existential reflection.
Then there’s the harrowing scene in The Virgin Spring (1960) when an innocent girl is brutally raped and murdered in the forest. Here, the audience encounters raw human violence and the fragility of human life and is introduced to the film’s key themes of faith and retribution.
In 1963’s Winter Light, Bergman shows repeated images of an empty, cold church, symbolizing the characters’ spiritual emptiness and crises of faith. The barren church reflects the existential bleakness and isolation central to the film’s narrative.
Persona, from 1966, contains one of the movie’s most memorable images: where the faces of the two main characters, played by Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, merge into one. This image, symbolizing the psychological entanglement between the two women, illustrates the film’s key theme—the fluidity of identity, the self and personality.
The red-drenched rooms In Cries and Whispers (1972) symbolize blood, pain and emotional intensity, reflecting the characters’ inner turmoil and suffering in the face of family estrangement, illness and death.
Then there’s the opening sequence in Fanny and Alexander (1982), where the young boy is watching a puppet show that is at once whimsical and eerie, which sets the film’s tone involving the artifice of storytelling and the permeable boundaries between reality and fantasy.
During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, every college student with any cultural pretensions was familiar with these iconic images. Yet, today, barely any of my undergraduates have any familiarity with Bergman’s canon.
The loss of engagement with Bergman’s films is something that I find sad, for his opus offered, in addition to iconic imagery, unparalleled psychological depth and emotional intensity. More than any other director, he demonstrated that film could be a vehicle for profound philosophical inquiry.
I just had the chance to visit the Bergman Center on Faroe Island, off the coast of Sweden, where the director spent his last years. There, one can see, amid many images from his life and capsule biographies of his collaborators, the notebooks where he meticulously planned his films’ sequences.
It’s no mystery about why interest in Bergman’s films has faded. Today’s audiences prefer fast-paced, visually driven films with straightforward narratives, not the slow pacing, complex themes and introspective storytelling that characterize Bergman’s filmmaking. Even the more sophisticated contemporary movies have shifted away from the kind of existential and psychological drama that Bergman specialized in.
At the same time, the rise of streaming platforms has democratized access to a vast array of films but has also led to content overload, and classic films, including Bergman’s, tend to get lost amid the vast selection of contemporary content.
In addition, the themes and concerns of post–World War II European cinema seem distant and less urgent compared to the issues facing today’s global society. But, as a result, much has been lost. I think it’s fair to say that the movies today lack Bergman’s films’ philosophical and psychological depth, raw emotional power, and visual symbolism.
Above all, there’s less interest in the kinds of exploration of existential questions that preoccupied Bergman: the search for meaning, the nature of faith and the inevitability of death.
It’s hard to believe that there would be much of an audience today for a film set amid the suffering and fear evoked by the Black Death; or the dreams and flashbacks that force an elderly professor to face up to his past, his failures and his relationships; or estranged sisters, one who is dying of cancer, confronting past traumas; or a guilt-consumed father, who, after killing the rapists who murdered his daughter, seeks atonement for his actions; or a father’s inability to help his daughter, who is suffering from mental illness; or a husband’s descent into madness and his wife’s struggle to understand and support him.
Bergman’s films were very much a product of a particular historical moment. The devastation of World War II and the Holocaust left many questioning the existence of God, the nature of evil and the meaning of life. These events created a backdrop for existential questions about human suffering, mortality and the possibility of redemption.
Cold War tensions exacerbated those concerns. The existential dread of living under the threat of nuclear annihilation further intensified the search for meaning and security in a world in flux.
Bergman’s exploration of religion, especially in the context of the post–World War II era and the growing secularization of society, is a central theme in many of his films. Born into a devout Lutheran family with an overbearing father, Bergman’s complex relationship with faith and his deep existential inquiries reflect broader cultural and societal shifts occurring during his lifetime.
Throughout his life, Bergman grappled with profound spiritual and existential questions. His films often reflect his personal crises of faith and his search for meaning in a seemingly indifferent universe. His characters often wrestle with the silence of God and the absence of divine intervention in the face of human suffering and seek meaning and purpose outside of conventional religious frameworks.
A recurring theme in Bergman’s work is the silence of God, reflecting his own existential struggle with the absence of clear answers or divine presence. In addition, his films often depict a quest for redemption or meaning. The absence of religious consolation often forces characters to find meaning and solace in human relationships and personal introspection.
In the absence of religious certainty, Bergman often presents human relationships as a source of meaning and solace. His characters frequently seek connection, love and understanding from one another as a way to cope with life’s existential challenges.
Also, the mid-20th century saw an increased emphasis on individualism and personal freedom, which challenged traditional norms and led a growing number of people to seek deeper personal and collective meaning.
Among the highly educated, the works of existential philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Søren Kierkegaard, with their ideas about the absurdity of life, the search for meaning and the importance of authentic existence, resonated deeply. Existentialist philosophy provided a framework for understanding the complexities and anxieties of modern life. Bergman tapped into his audience’s interest in psychological exploration, and many viewers found Bergman’s examination of faith, doubt and the search for God compelling, as these themes mirrored their own spiritual journeys and questions.
I think it’s easy today to forget how important existential themes were to the culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Themes of existential angst and the quest for purpose and meaning run through the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger and the landmark film Easy Rider, while Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest underscored the existential concept of absurdity, as individuals struggle in the face of irrationality. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy emphasized personal responsibility and conscious moral choice in the face of systemic injustice.
More than any other filmmaker, Bergman successfully translated existential philosophy into the language of cinema. There’s the theme of existential angst. His characters often grapple with feelings of isolation, despair and an absence of purpose.
Bergman’s films also explore the conflict between faith and doubt, reflecting his own struggles with religion and spirituality. His characters frequently question the existence of God and the nature of faith. Winter Light portrays a pastor’s crisis of faith and his struggle with the silence of God.
The dynamics of personal relationships, including marriage, family and friendship, are central to many of Bergman’s films. He often portrayed the pain, alienation and connection within these relationships. His Scenes From a Marriage (1973) dissects the breakdown of a marriage and the complex emotional landscape of the couple involved. Fanny and Alexander explores family relationships and the impact of a domineering stepfather.
Bergman’s films also reflect on the nature of art, creativity and the artist’s role in society. He often used meta-narratives and self-referential techniques to explore these themes. The Magic Flute (1975) is a love letter to the art of opera, while The Silence (1963) offers his meditations on artistic expression and communication.
Bergman’s films are deeply rooted in Swedish culture and history. The austerity, introspection and melancholic beauty often present in his work reflect the Scandinavian cultural context. The use of natural landscapes, such as the Swedish archipelagos and rural settings, is prominent, enhancing the themes of isolation and introspection.
Sweden’s Lutheran heritage and its emphasis on personal faith, introspection and moral responsibility significantly influenced Bergman’s exploration of religious and existential themes.
In an era dominated by fast-paced commercial entertainment, it is deeply regrettable that most college students are wholly unfamiliar with the films of Ingmar Bergman. The decline in awareness of his films is a genuine cultural loss. I don’t think many undergraduates appreciate film’s ability to explore universal human concerns and philosophical issues.
The declining interest in Bergman’s opus is part of a larger draft away from an interest in existentialism, which gained significant traction in the wake of World War II with its themes of individual freedom, choice and the search for meaning in an inherently meaningless world. The reasons are multiple. On an academic level, analytical philosophy, with its emphasis on logic, language and scientific rigor, made existentialism seem excessively abstract and literary, rather than, yes, analytic.
Postmodernist thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard shifted the focus toward deconstructing grand narratives, including those of existentialism. Postmodernism’s skepticism of universal truths and emphasis on power structures and discourse helped make existentialism seem outdated and out of touch.
Also, the existential crises of meaning and identity became less urgent for many as material conditions improved in the decades following World War II. Then, when the economy began to stagnate during the 1970s, interest shifted toward more practical and immediate concerns, rather than the abstract questions of meaning and existence central to existentialism. In more recent years, virtual reality and artificial intelligence have challenged traditional existentialist ideas about human experience and authenticity, leading to new philosophical questions that move beyond existentialist frameworks.
Today’s issues like climate change, digital privacy and identity politics, are more pressing, and these concerns often require frameworks that address systemic and collective issues rather than purely individual existential crises. There has been a significant shift toward identity politics and social justice movements, which focus on structural inequalities and collective identities. These movements often seek systemic change rather than the existentialist focus on individual freedom and personal responsibility.
Positive psychology, which emphasizes human strengths, well-being and happiness, contrasts starkly with the often bleak outlook of existentialism by focusing on ways to improve life satisfaction and mental health.
There has also been a resurgence of interest in spiritual practices, mindfulness and Eastern philosophies, which offer alternative approaches to meaning and existence. These practices often emphasize interconnectedness and inner peace, differing from existentialism’s perceived elitism, pessimism and focus on individual angst and despair.
While existentialism’s themes of freedom, choice, authenticity and the search for meaning continue to resonate and can still be found in various forms of art, literature and theater, there has been a shift in cultural discourse away from introspective themes involving faith, mortality and the human condition.
The now largely forgotten master of existential cinema provided a unique cinematic lens through which he explored profound existential issues—about identity, meaning and the nature of human existence—with a depth, honesty and complexity that is almost entirely absent today.
Let’s reintroduce our students to Bergman’s films. There are few better ways to help them acquire a deeper understanding of the interplay between art, culture and the existential questions that define human life.
