Italian politicians and prominent names from the world of culture paid tribute to the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who died on Monday at the age of 89.
Bergman had few links with Italy but he knew the country's classic cinema well and counted Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) among his three favourite films of all time.
He also had many admirers here. "Bergman will remain alive in the collective memory because he changed the history of world cinema," said one of them, Culture Minister and Deputy Premier Francesco Rutelli.
Rutelli described the three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker as "ingenious and difficult, a hard-core intellectual, an irreplaceable personality who leaves a deep vacuum".
Critics rank Bergman as one of cinema's all-time greats alongside directors such as Charlie Chaplin and Italy's Federico Fellini.
Academy Award-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci placed Bergman alongside Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni as a pioneer of profundity and sensitivity in movies.
"Bergman took cinema in a new, unexplored direction, which had been reserved for literature up to then," said the maker of The Last Emperor and Last Tango in Paris.
"It was the direction of the profoundness of the human spirit, moving increasingly deeper into men and women, with a black-and-white that made his characters ghosts and his ghosts characters".
Bergman's films include classics like Cries & Whispers, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.
He was nominated for nine Oscars and won three best foreign film Academy Awards for The Virgin Spring (1961), Through a Glass Darkly (1962) and Fanny and Alexander (1984).
"Ingmar Bergman's death is a cause of great sadness and sorrow for all cinema lovers," said Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, who is a big movie buff.
HOMAGE FROM COMMUNISTS AND VATICAN
House Speaker and veteran Communist leader Fausto Bertinotti sent a message of condolence to Bergman's family, praising the director's "an extraordinary capacity to fully investigate the great ethical questions linked to the human condition".
Vatican Radio honoured Bergman too, saying he was "one of the most important directors in the history of cinema, always capable of handling the fundamental issues of life and society"..
"He was religious in a reserved, personal way that escaped the ephemeral lights that often animate the cinema world".
Bergman's artistic breakthrough came with Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), set in a third-rate circus in which the director portrays an artist's despised and wasted life.
His first international success was Smiles of the Summer Night (1955) and two years later Bergman made Wild Strawberries, a landmark film dealing with the subject of man's isolation.
The crowning moment of Bergman's career came in 1983 with the autobiographical Fanny and Alexander, which earned the director his third best foreign film Oscar and placed him firmly in the league of world's top movie masters.
In total he directed 62 feature films and television productions in a career spanning six decades.
