bookshelf

IMAGES

Name: IMAGES
Author: Ingmar Bergman
ISBN: 1-55970-186-2

MY LIFE IN FILM

by Ingmar Bergman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1994

bookshelf

Warmly appealing, indispensable review of all his films by Swedish filmmaker Bergman as he sits down to look at each one, many of which he's not seen for 30 or 40 years. Bergman begins by dismissing 1973's Bergman on Bergman—in which he answered questions put to him by three Swedish interviewers—as being full of defensive lies by himself. Fans familiar with that work may be put off by the early pages here, as well as by other stretches, which wobble with head-stuff and as writing are inferior to the more keenly detailed verbalizations in the earlier work the director now intends to outstrip. Today's Bergman has less to say about the nuts and bolts of his filmmaking, focusing instead on motives for his screenplays and on how he wove threads of his own character through different characters from film to film. His strongest moments come when pointing out his failures, fears, and shortsightedness in various works, huge humiliations he brought on himself by not following his first instincts—sometimes by settling too quickly for a smooth surface, at other times by deluding himself for years that he'd created strong works (The Serpent's Egg, Shame, and others) that he now joins his critics in dismissing, at least in part—though not without the keenest eye for what went wrong and what seduced him into his delusions. One feels Bergman's pain as he edits his 312-minute Fanny and Alexander, filmed for Swedish TV, down to a three-hour theatrical release for the rest of the world. More amusing: his take on his famous trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. Bergman now finds no reason to call it a trilogy: ``It was a Schnaps-IdÇe...an idea found at the bottom of a glass of alcohol....'' One of the century's greats looks at the bugs under his rocks. All told, stronger than his autobiography, The Magic Lantern (1988). (More than 200 b&w photographs)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994

ISBN: 1-55970-186-2

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Arcade

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

- BOOK REVIEW
PRIVATE CONFESSIONS
by Ingmar Bergman

- BOOK REVIEW
SUNDAY'S CHILDREN
by Ingmar Bergman

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)