Key Themes of Ingmar Bergman's Cinema in Giuseppe Pontiggia's Writing

Abstract

This article examines certain analogies in works by the Swedish film-maker Ingmar Bergman and the Italian writer Giuseppe Pontiggia. Existential death emerges as a shared theme in the central works of their respective careers, Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) and Pontiggia's Il giocatore invisibile (1978), as well as a concern for the power and failure of verbal communication. Furthermore, a series of subsidiary motifs permeates both artists' works, including the revelation of existential failure, the possibility of rebirth, and a conceptual link between language, chess, and the understanding of life.