Fin

Is it possible that Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman have died on the same day? It's going to be a long week of sleepless nights for film critics expected to generate posthumous appreciation essays.

I can't begin to express my admiration for either of these two titans. When I was in college and beginning to discover movies as an art form, I wrote earnest, rapturous, and no doubt ridiculous term papers on them both. These years later I still need to watch L'Avventura or The Seventh Seal from time to time, particularly when my head gets too full of all the wonderful kandy-kolored klaptrap that passes for culture these days and I need the big black and white broom of an austere auteur to sweep me clean. And if you say that makes me pretentious, I say that makes you a sucker.