Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
The Demons of Modernity
Ingmar Bergman and European Cinema
by John Orr
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Ingmar Bergman’s films had a very broad and rich relationship with the rest of European cinema, contrary to the myth that Bergman was a peripheral figure, culturally and aesthetically isolated from the rest of Europe. This book contends that he should be put at the very center of European film history by chronologically comparing Bergman’s relationship to key European directors such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and also looks at Bergman’s critical relationship to key movements in film history such as the French New Wave. In so doing, it demonstrates how Ingmar Bergman’s films illustrate the demonic struggle in modernity between faith and secularity through “his intense preoccupation with the malaise of intimacy.”
About the Author:
John Orr (1943-2010) was Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh where he taught film studies. He contributed to many film journals, and his books include Cinema and Modernity, Contemporary Cinema, The Art and Politics of Film, and Hitchcock and Twentieth Century Cinema. His most recent book is Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema (Edinburgh UP, 2010).
Press Reviews:
"Orr's analysis offers consistently fresh comparisons, tracing ways that… represent rich and subtle cinematic conversations. Orr's reach is broad, detailed, and informed by both current critical conversations and the perspective of intervening decades. Highly recommended." · Choice
"A reader who has viewed and scrutinized the numerous films discussed in Orr’s contribution will benefit from the thoughtful insights of an accomplished film scholar in this virtuosic étude." · Scandinavian Studies
"…one of the most remarkable features of the book is the emphasis, usually forgotten, on contextualizing Bergman among other film traditions, taking into consideration not only subject matter criteria, but historical or socio-economic issues… Precisely at a time that increasingly advocates for interdisciplinary approaches and contextualization of cultural phenomena, this book provides the necessary material and insight and opens the opportunity for addressing important issues on the impact of modernist European films in the history of cinema and for us to move forward into further discussion on theoretical and methodological questions." · Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
"On the evidence of this brilliantly allusive study of Ingmar Bergman, John Orr, had it not been for his premature passing, would have become one of the world's most influential of film analysts. Even beneath the shadow of the plethora of books on Bergman, Orr's approach is distinctive… He emphasizes the maestro's courageous leap into Modernism in the early 1960's, and the profound influence he exerted on his contemporaries. It is a pleasure to read Orr's elegant prose, which eschews the obtuse terminology of semiotics in favor of a lucid, almost passionate approach to the material. Bergman, one feels, would have enjoyed this book." · Peter Cowie, author of Ingmar Bergman, A Critical Biography.
"The Demons of Modernity hits the ground running. We travel around the sociology, aesthetics and demonology of Ingmar Bergman with John Orr's great speed of thought and agility. The book is bracing, challenging, beautifully judged, fair minded, unstinting, and exhilarating." · Mark Cousins, filmmaker and director of The Story of Film: An Odyssey
See the publisher website: Berghahn Books
See the complete filmography of Ingmar Bergman on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
The Cinema of Roman Polanski (2006)
Dark Spaces of the World
Dir. John Orr and Elżbieta Ostrowska
Subject: Director > Roman Polanski
The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda (2004)
Dir. John Orr and Elżbieta Ostrowska
Subject: Director > Andrzej Wajda
> On a related topic:
Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus (2025)
Film Cultures and International Reception
Dir. Jono Van Belle, Fernando Ramos Arenas and María Paz Peirano
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
A Companion to Ingmar Bergman (2025)
Dir. Daniel Humphrey and Hamish Ford
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
God and the Devil (2025)
The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman
by Peter Cowie
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman at the Crossroads (2024)
Between Theory and Practice
Dir. Maaret Koskinen
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Films of Ingmar Bergman (2022)
From Freud to Lacan and Beyond
Dir. Vanessa Sinclair
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
The Ingmar Bergman Archives (2016)
Dir. Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Sonatas, Screams, and Silence (2015)
Music and Sound in the Films of Ingmar Bergman
by Alexis Luko
Subject: Director > Ingmar Bergman
Back
