Status Updates From The Passion of Ingmar Bergman

It's been 20 months since I've watched a Bergman film; I should never fall into that kind of drought again, haha. Gado devotes a mere page to the early adaptation of an Olle Länsberg novel, PORT OF CALL. It's shame, because I thought, barring the final 15 minutes or so, it's a highly successful union of melodrama and neo-realism. Gado disagrees, of course. Time to move on to CRIES AND WHISPERS next, hopefully...

Interesting bit from his later phase: "...Initially, [Persona Limited's] purpose was to accumulate capital for LOVE DUET, the two-part film he had originally planned to make with Fellini. But that project collapsed after Bergman visited Cinecittà with a completed draft of his script and discovered that Fellini had only a page of jottings to show him" (465). Damn you, Fellini; damn you.