Laughing at death

Last week, I spent a strange 24 hours flying from London to New York and back again, stopping off in the Big Apple just long enough to discuss the sombre European cinema of Ingmar Bergman with quintessential East Coast humourist Woody Allen. It was a somewhat peculiar affair, with the exotic blend of jet-lag, hero-worship, and profound metaphysical/existential angst combining to give our meeting a somewhat dream-like quality - for me, at least. Having learned that FilmFour were planning to show a retrospective of Bergman's films later this year covering the legendary Swedish director's entire career, Allen had agreed to be interviewed about his filmmaking idol, the man who gave us Death playing chess with Max Von Sydow in The Seventh Seal, who looked physical decay in the face in Cries And Whispers, and who (according to Allen's satirical classic Love And Death) breathed new meaning into "a tremendous amount of wheat". And so there I was, seated across from Woody in a swanky Manhattan hotel, looking furtively over my ill-fitting glasses, furrowing my already well-ploughed brow, and asking "So, Woody, the films of Ingmar Bergman - what about the early funny ones then?"

The Bergman-Allen axis has long been a source of profound fascination for film critics who care to interpret all of Woody's more serious films (September, Another Woman, Shadows And Fog etc) as an attempt to walk in the European maestro's footsteps. Certainly there have been many wry nods and winks to Bergman's work running throughout Allen's oeuvre, from the hilarious establishment of Swedish as the national language of the Republic of San Marcos in Bananas, to the silent, type-faced titles of Annie Hall (Bergman thought film music was "savage" and preferred unfussy credits), and even the bawdy structure of A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy which was allegedly inspired by Smiles Of A Summer Night (although, for the record, Allen professes no interest in Bergman's "early funny ones"). All these stylistic ticks have been noted in volumes such as Faber's excellent 'Allen On Allen' as evidence of Woody's obsession with Ingmar. But they remain little more than window dressing when it comes to the real connection between Bergman and Allen; namely, a shared obsession with that most hilariously tragic of life's mysteries - the inevitability of death.