Film critic and scholar David Sterritt said Bergman made it fashionable among American audiences to discuss movies as an art form. Previously, that distinction was largely reserved for adaptations of Shakespeare or other old masters.

With their abstract, sometimes allegorical storytelling technique, Bergman’s nearly 60 films found their greatest fans among viewers in small, “art-house” theatres. His most enthusiastic American champion was Woody Allen, who tried to mimic his themes with Interiors and A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy.

Three of Bergman’s movies received Oscars for best foreign language film: The Virgin Spring (1960), about a 14th-century Swede who avenges the rape and death of his daughter; Through a Glass Darkly (1961), about a crumbling modern family; and Fanny and Alexander (1982), a story of terrifying adolescence. In the last, an ascetic bishop canes his stepson for a minor infraction and makes the child beg for forgiveness. This mirrored Bergman’s upbringing as the son of a strict and unforgiving Lutheran minister.

Bergman created a stock company of performers, including Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand and Erland Josephson. He relied heavily on cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nyvquist, who captured with unparalleled beauty, cruelty, sensuality and selfishness often colliding in the same scene.

The director worked closely with his cameramen to create some of the most memorable images in 20th-century cinema. One such moment was the finale of The Seventh Seal, in which a parade of characters dance to their doom with scythe-wielding Death leading the way.

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