Leading Article: Cries and whispers

Ingmar Bergman always said he was afraid of death. What he wasn't afraid of was life. Too unafraid for those who thought that Sweden was about being blonde and busty. And, indeed, his unsparing eye made the camera an unblinking observer of the grief that lies behind the face. But a director who devoted much of his life to the theatre, who directed some of the most delicious productions of Mozart opera, and who came to fame with a string of semi-comic romances, cannot be sidelined as a simple Nordic gloomster.

Nobody who has seen his great tribute to the magic of performance, Fanny and Alexander, with which he announced his retirement in 1982 - he never did completely retire of course - could doubt that here was a man for whom art was release and joy as well as a means of examining the human predicament. If he is regarded as one of the true greats of cinema, it is because he understood the power of the symbol and the possibility of the close-up in a manner no one has ever been able to equal. To see a Bergman film is to feel that you have seen behind the curtain by looking straight at it.

Ironically enough, he died just as the world of film, and cinemas throughout this country, were celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of his best-known films,The Seventh Seal. It ends with an incomparable shot of the dance of death as the players are led off by a figure of death against a sun bursting through the clouds. It wasn't intended. He saw the scene as the cast were packing up, seized the nearest crew at hand, dressed them in the costumes and shot them in a single take. That was his real genius - the seizure of the moment to create something timeless.

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