Although Bergman - who died of natural causes on July 30 at his home in Faro, Sweden at the age of 89 - has received wide critical recognition over the last 50 years for his insightful and marvelously polished filmmaking, it just doesn't seem that enough accolades have been given to a director who embodied the term "auteur" more than any other artist of his generation and whose body of work has greatly influenced contemporary movies and culture in general.

He was born Ernst Ingmar Bergman in Uppsala, Sweden on July 14, 1918 and was the son of a Lutheran pastor. The product of a strict upbringing, Bergman had found escapism in cinema since early childhood. After military service in 1938, he attended Stockholm University where he majored in art and literature and eventually became drawn to theater. He soon joined the Stockholm theater as an apprentice director and began sharpening his skills as a playwright.

In 1941, he was hired by the script department in Svensk Filmindustri and within a few years, his first screenplay was brought to the screen, Torment (1944); it was a dark psychological story about a high school infatuation, and the film was enough of a success to earn Bergman the chance to direct one of his own scripts - Crisis, a better than average domestic drama.

For fans of Bergman, the thick tapestry of emotional undercurrents that would characterize his movies were first felt in Summer Interlude (1951). The fact that the film was told in flashback was a notable mark in Bergman's desire to break from traditional narrative structure. With The Naked Night (1953), he moved closer to a somber, deeper tone with this strikingly photographedperiod piece.

His works that followed were simply high water marks in world cinema: the achingly lyrical romantic drama Smiles of a Summer Night (1955); his bold takes on faith and mortality, symbolized with a chess game between death and a knight (Max Von Sydow, who would go on to star in a number of Bergman's films) in The Seventh Seal (1957); and the beautifully introspective Wild Strawberries (1957), which examines (with humor and insight) the unfulfilling life of a middle-aged doctor.

By the '60s, Bergman was the darling of arthouse cinema, and his films continued to push the envelopes in terms of daring thematic concepts, discursive dialogue, and stark visualizations - which were aided greatly when he acquired Sven Nykvist as his cinematographer. He won the best foreign films Oscars® for The Virgin Spring (1960), a haunting tale about a the rape and murder of a young girl and the peasant parents who exact revenge on her killers. For Through a Glass Darkly (1961), he created an unsettling portrait of a disturbed young woman (conveyed through intense close-ups that would become a hallmark for Bergman's approach to filming actors) whose hallucinations culminate with a visit from god. His heady meditations on self-examination would be realized brilliantly in what is arguably his finest film - Persona (1966). The story of an mute actress (Liv Ullman) and a nurse (Bibi Anderson) assigned to care for her takes some unusual and involving turns, especially when their personalities begin to subliminate with each other. It's an astounding look at identity issues and some of the film's best sequences (such as Ullman reacting to the image of a Vietnamese monk burning himself on television) are simply galvanizing.

Although he was only 51, Bergman received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Irving J. Thalberg Award in 1970 for his contribution to cinema. It was a just reward given for what he achieved up to that point, but some strong work still lay ahead: Cries and Whispers (1972) a devastating period study of family connections and Scenes from a Marriage (1973) about a tumultuous couple (Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson) whose frequent outbursts displayed all the ambivalence of love and hate.

In 1976, Bergman was arrested in Stockholm for tax evasion. Although charges against him were soon dropped, he relocated to Munich as a home base for the next few years. It didn't stop him from creating the terrific Autumn Sonata, a tale of a famous pianist (Ingrid Bergman) struggling to reconnect with a neglected daughter (Liv Ullman); and when he returned to Sweden, he made the marvelous, wistful, semi-autographical Fanny and Alexander which earned him his third Oscar® for best Foreign Film.

Toward the end of his life, Bergman would continue his work in both stage and television. But in between, he managed to publish an autobiography Laterna Magica (1987), and in 1997, he received the honorary Palm of Palms super award from the Cannes Film Festival. His last work was the made for television film Saraband (2003), a raw, soul searching portrait of a man who tries to cope with the death of an estranged son.

Yes, he's gone, but Ingmar Bergman will unlikely ever be forgotten by his innumerable number of critics, fans and film students. He was unmarried at the time of his death, but he is survived by several children through many unions.

by Michael T. Toole