Ingmar Bergman (July 14, 1918, Uppsala, Sweden, July 30, 2007, Fårö, Sweden) creator of such films as Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage and Fanny and Alexander turns his perceptive filmmaker's eye on himself for a revealing portrait of his life and obsessions. Laterna Magica = The Magic Lantern: an autobiography‬ of Ingmar Bergman, Ingmar Bergman No ‘tell-all’ book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker’ books are not.”- Library Journal “What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. “ keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”- New York Times

The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”- New Republic “Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch. Many gripping revelations.”- New York Times Book Review “ has found a way to show the soul’s landscape . Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them.

More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.” Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern. “When a film is not a document, it is a dream.

The magic lantern bergman