It did actually go both ways in this case though
I know. They each loved the other's work. But by the end of his career Tarkovsky got to the point where he tried to
be Bergman and make a Bergman film whereas Bergman never actually got sucked into trying to be Tarkovsky and make a Tarkovsky film. Since Tarkovsky is so much style over substance, it's easier for him to fall into another filmmaker's mold, whereas Bergman, for better or worse, can't help making a Bergman movie each time out.
I think you can see why in that whilst their styles differed a good deal their basic outlook was pretty similar looking to make films with a strong empathic message, Kubrick tending to be more cynical and offering warnings instead.
Hmm. I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on the Bergman/Tarkovsky connection, because I don't really see one. As I see the two of them, Bergman was the eternal optimist who was constantly battling the demon of pessimism while Tarkovsky seemed to be a cynic who could never manage to be cynical enough and for whom a certain variety of optimism always creeped into his work almost in spite of himself (which perhaps explains my sense of his narrative ambivalence/incoherence/contradictions).
I also would never in a million years call Kubrick a cynic. He was actually a happy, jovial, upbeat, and optimistic guy. The "offering warnings" part is spot-on, and that's because his films were more in the vein of cautionary tales intended to instruct people in the pitfalls to be avoided for the sake of our individual selves and our collective species. But the very notion of instructing is optimistic inasmuch as it presupposes the possibility of learning and understanding. It might be best to call him a "cautious optimist"
I tend to rewatch cinema I like quite a lot as well which limits the potential for seeing vast amounts of new films.
I'm with you 100% on this.
Perhaps personal background is an issue here as well? you have one in critical analysis of cinema which I think Bergman naturally lends himself too much more, I have one in photography which deals much more in basic mood and tone which Tarkovsky plays into well, not that Bergman is lacking in it often as well of course in what I'v seen.
This probably plays a part.
The other faith/god trilogy films are certainly top of my list to watch.
I've seen
Through a Glass Darkly three times and
The Silence four times but I've only seen
Winter Silence once. I actually rewatched
Through a Glass Darkly sometime within the last year, randomly spotting it on TCM and DVRing it. Ever since, I've been meaning to have a Bergman marathon and rewatch some of what's faded in my memory and finally get around to the small handful of his films that have eluded me to this point.
Going back to influence I would say that really all of these names, Bergman, Tarkovsky(albeit often more indirectly via Ridley Scott) and Kubrick have come to the fore significantly since the millennium. I remember a time in the 80's and 90's were Bergman was considered a bit of a meme....
...you could argue done with a certain degree of respect I spose but really I think the likes of Marty were really considered to have more worth which I'd say fed into a lot of the 90's independent scene as well with its focus on the witty and the stylish.
More recently though I think we've really see that reverse, more overtly "cool" cinema has tended to decline in favour of more emotionally raw drama and expansive atmosphere. I think you could argue the film in my avi is almost the intersection of all three of them.
I think that this is a largely accurate historical snapshot of contemporary cinema and its influences. In the '70s, the art house influence was less about the substance of the films than it was about the style and, even more importantly, beyond the films themselves, the attitudes and methods of the filmmakers. The De Palmas and the Coppolas, they loved the freedom and the independence of the Godards and the Bergmans and that's what fueled them. It was the generation just preceding them, with the Kubricks and the Lumets, for whom the actual substance of the art films of the '50s and '60s had a real influence. Although Scorsese is a bit of an outliar given the profound influence of Fellini, specifically
I Vitelloni, on
Mean Streets.
Then, once you get to the likes of Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, and Darren Aronofsky, the influence is once again direct and manifests in the very substance of the films.
