Bergman: from tormented childhood to film icon

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Considered by some to be the greatest film-maker ever, Ingmar Bergman exorcised a traumatic childhood through cinematic masterpieces that explored sexual anxiety, loneliness and the search for meaning in life.

Bergman died on Monday. He was 89.

In a career spanning half a century, in which he produced more than 50 films and 125 theatre productions, Bergman became Scandinavia's most acclaimed cultural personality.

Films such as "Wild Strawberries", "Scenes From a Marriage", and his great classic, "Fanny and Alexander", elevated him to be one of the masters of cinema though it brought Sweden, his country, a reputation for melancholy.

His private life often thrust him into the limelight. He was married five times to beautiful and talented women and had many liaisons with his leading actresses.

He influenced scores of film-makers, including Woody Allen, who idolized Bergman and paid homage to the Swedish director's classic "The Seventh Seal" with his early comedy "Love and Death".

"Above all there's Ingmar Bergman, who is probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," said American Allen in a birthday greeting for Bergman when he turned 70.

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on July 14, 1918. His father, a Lutheran minister who became chaplain to the Swedish King, caned and humiliated the sickly boy.

"It was a life-and-death struggle: either the parents were broken or the child was broken," Bergman later recalled.

Bergman has also talked of a deep love for his mother and his refuge in fantasy and taste for the macabre.

Critics have traced the recurring themes of repression, guilt and punishment to the director's strict upbringing.

Bergman told Reuters in a rare interview in 2001 that personal demons tormented and inspired him throughout his life.

"The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times and create panic and terror," he said at the time. "But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage.

Never was the autobiographical link as clear as in "Fanny and Alexander", which he proclaimed as his grand finale as a film-maker.

The film, produced in three- and five-hour versions, won four Oscars in 1984, one for best foreign language film. Bergman, shy and indifferent to prizes and gala ceremonies, chose to unplug the phone and sleep through the extravaganza in his Munich flat.

"Fanny and Alexander" is a lavish panorama of an Uppsala upper-class family in the years preceding World War One. The boy Alexander, 10, and his eight-year-old sister Fanny are mentally and physically abused by their stepfather, the local bishop modeled on Bergman's father.