Bergmania having reached the end of Bergman's religious period with the screening of the astonishing THE SILENCE, the time was finally ripe to begin reading a bit of critical writing on Bergman. Bergman is one of the most chronicled directors there is - perhaps only Hitchcock, Welles and Fellini have had as many books published about them. Back when I was reading on Fellini, the decision of which texts to consume and in what order was impossible to make. The variety of takes on the man and his films was bewildering, and no definitive work seems to have emerged from the many available. I had no such problems with Bergman, however, even though the choices were just as numerous and just as varied - I chose Peter Cowie's critical biography without hesitation.

The contours of Bergman's artistic life fit perfectly over those of the rise, fruition, senescence, and living heritage of the post-WWII European "Art Film." Cowie's career as a critic was born of and steeped in the Art Film from the beginnings of the phenomenon. He was absorbing and documenting not only Bergman, but the entire European scene as it was happening. His take on Bergman is informed by a lived - rather than merely researched - appreciation of the greater corpus of works to which Bergman's work must be contrasted and compared if it is to be understood at all. Whether Cowie's judgements are worthy or not is in some sense irrelevant - his voice is, right or wrong, wholly authentic to the times.

I happen to like Cowie's writing. His prose has a dry, clean tone which lets his obvious enthusiasm for cinema carry the reader along. The book is a "critical biography," and it was the factual information I most wanted at this point in my reading, and if nothing else I trust Cowie to be informative. Cowie charted Bergman's influences well enough to provide me with a substantial reading list which includes Moliere and Strindberg - a nice dose of capital-L Literature once I've got a weekend to indulge in nothing but reading. Some of Bergman's musical tastes are cited as well, but I have not yet followed up on those.

At this point I have read only up to the discussion of THE SILENCE, a film which cleanly demarks the previous "religious" thematic period of Bergman's work from the subsequent "psychological" period. I have not yet considered Cowie's critical take on Bergman in any way, but on the whole I would say so far his stance is uninflected, to be generous. His comments seem less personal than I know to be the case with many other writers, and nothing he's said so far has deviated from what I think of as common critical concensus on Bergman.