Who's Great?

Two of my favorite film directors died recently, and on the same day, Bergman and Antonioni. I'm used to these losses now. With each passing month or week, it seems, someone who helped to shape my life dies. I read the obituaries and remember my encounters with them, more likely with their work. Sometimes these are followed by appreciations, more extended articles attempting to place the recently deceased in a now revised hierarchy of greatness.

Personally, I'm not sure whether Bergman or Antonioni were great directors or not. I suspect they were, and I would rank them high among my personal favorites if only because I have seen nearly every film they made. When I'm drawn to the films of a particular director, I usually go through a phase of wanting to see every film they've directed. Having studied film rather seriously during the late sixties and early seventies, I fell under the spell of the theory that saw directors as authors or auteurs. Although even at that time I was keenly aware that films are products of large groups of artists and technicians, and even the strongest directors can only do so much to enforce their vision on the final product. Nevertheless, I found grouping movies by directors made sense. And certainly the movies made by Bergman and Antonioni were recognizably the work of strong directors, as were films by Fellini, Truffaut, Kurosawa, and Welles.

Were all of these great directors? I would certainly say they were, as were Howard Hawks and John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. I've seen nearly all of their movies too. But I've also tried to see all of the movies with Humphrey Bogart and Burt Lancaster and Gregory Peck, as well as those with Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn and Julie Christie. And many of those movies were great too regardless who directed them. But what is greatness? I guess it's what I like and find somehow enduring, at least in my own view of things. Can something be great if everyone else likes it but I don't? No, of course not. Can something be great if no one else seems to like it but I do? Certainly. And, in time, I'm convinced I'll be proven right.

Yes, I know this is all very silly. I sometimes wonder if any of us realizes how silly it all really is? Someone was trying to decide whether or not Bergman was really great just this morning in the New York Times. I read enough of it to know I didn't care what he thought, although I did agree with his point that Bergman was an entertainer. He was also good with comedy, something not everyone seems to remember. And his films were almost always, I would say always, visually attractive. But what appealed to me most was the way he gave his audience something to think about. Bergman liked to think, and he assumed his audience did as well. I can't imagine watching a Bergman movie without talking about it afterwards, sometimes for days and weeks, and even years afterwards.

That was reinforced for me recently when I watched Saraband, Bergman's last movie. I would recommend it, but I don't know what sort of impression it would make on someone who hasn't seen quite a lot of other Bergman films, especially Scenes from a Marriage. But it's worth watching, especially on DVD, because there's a very good documentary about the making of the movie that provides some interesting background on Bergman's way of directing. It also provides even more stuff to talk about afterwards. I had a rather different experience not long afterwards watching a DVD of Antonioni's 1975 movie The Passenger. That's the one with Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. The plot is too improbable to explain, but the movie is visually captivating and Nicholson and Schneider make it interesting to watch. Still, I wonder if Antonioni didn't lose his way in the 1970s?

When we stop wanting to watch those movies and talk about them, I guess they'll be forgotten. But will they still be great? Well, nothing is great forever except Homer, and we don't really know who he was anyway.