and after college we can't stand him now that we are adults. Is that okay?

the foursome of legendary directors whose work created and defined the art-film market in the years after World War II, the others being Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and François Truffaut.

Excuse me? Godard didn't create and define the art-film market?

The first time I've read an O'Hehir piece and thought, what the hell are you saying?

The first Bergman film I ever saw was Wild Strawberries. I was 18, my whole life ahead of me. I knew nothing of regret or longing. My whole existence was, essentially a patch of wild strawberries ripe for me to pick. There is no reason why this film should have connected with me, I completely understood Isak's story. In my opinion, you can't ask more from art than that.

"Simon is a contentious and disagreeable fellow, and no doubt the remark struck some people as fatuous even then."

In the context of Simon fawning over Bergman, what in the world does "contentious and disagreeable" have to do with anything?

Bergman was an ego floating on a sea of melancholy pretentiousness. The faux avant garde quizzically say they understand and admire his work for fear of not being among the art cognoscenti! His stuff is self-indulgent, introspective and artifice built on inauthentic artistic legerdemain. I appreciate the pantheon that includes Fellini, Goddard, Lelouch,Fassbinder,Kurosawa, Antonioni even Almodovar but...Bergman? Nah. May he rest in peace and may we remember him well...as a second-tier talent at best. His best product was not film but Liv Ullman.

Bergman's images were archtetypal. I remember them almost as if I didn't see them in a film, as if they happened to me -- but not to me, deeper than that: parts, pieces, scenes -- the father in Virgin Spring beating himself in the sauna, inflicting pain to drown out the pain of his daughter's rape and murder and preparing himself for what he knows he must do; the magic shop of Fanny and Alexander (so many scenes from Fanny and Alexander), the theater troupe (?) in Wild Strawberries, the silhouetted dancers in the distance, of course, in Seventh Seal -- so many more. Bergman was the definition of a great filmmaker.

How insulting, to come on here the day after someone's death and post letters with the sole purpose of denigrating his reputation and life's work. Was that really necessary?

Whether you love him or hate him, he was an important film-maker and his work played an integral role in the development of art and film. That's not my point, though.

This is a sad day for many people, the cliche "end of an era", and a little decency and respect would be appreciated.

I discovered Bergman at the old Brattle Theater off Harvard Square in 1969-1970. What I learned from his movies was how to watch slowly and intensively, and to see expressions, words, or tableaux become signs and symbols (but not allegories--except when he did it with genius, as in the Seventh Seal!) that suggested but did not try to explain more hidden dimensions. I was not especially into arts or culture but a mathematics nerd, so there was a lot I needed to absorb. If I did not have personal experience of all the passions and moods displayed on the screen and still had confidence in clear communication, I started to glimpse how strangely and sometimes disastrously others lived out of inner worlds I did not understand, and how (self-)destructive actions and words could be.

El Duende, all the other directors you mention did/have done fine work. Some are undoubtedly great. But think about what Walter Scott said of Jane Austen: "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me."

Perhaps Bergman's world does not seem so ordinary--but is that because he chose outrageous scenarios or characters, or because he knew how to evoke extraordinary things from ones that, in different circumstances, would have been *just* ordinary? He never relied on spectacle or *self*-indulgence; his greatness was in exploring intimacy.

I'm a guy raised in the lower-middle class who happens to love film and other media. I have a B.A. in communications. I attended a respected university and attended many film classes. Guess what? They never showed Bergman. Hitchcock? Bunuel? John Ford? William Witney? Yes. But no Bergman.

Perhaps it's because films of this sort appeal more to people who prefer to discuss life than live it. Someone like Bergman gets a reputation and an elite promotes him. They chew over the "meaning of life" he presents in his films but they never digest anything, and to the rest of us, those guys are gnawing boiled shoe leather in their mouths.

And yes, it's terrible to speak ill of the dead. But if he had anything to say to us, through his films or otherwise, we would have heard about it before. Or maybe we have, through directors who absorbed something from these films (so we wouldn't have to see them ourselves) and who produced something relevant to real people's lives through their own works.

But then again, it's probably better for the Art Snobs that most people don't care about Bergman. After all, the first rule of Art Snobbery is that whatever is popular automatically loses.

Yes, you're right- anyone who has had any experience different from your own is a 'snob' or 'pretentious' or (my favorite) not really living life. Nothing arrogant about that attitude whatsoever.

Here's what I don't love about a lot of the posts here - both in the letters above and, often, in the tone of some of Salon's critics (not O'Hehir, for the most part): I can hear in them the sound of two arms folding.

Soon after, out come the Paglian tropes about snobbery - so quick, and so predictable, and so self-satisfied. They all really mean "I have nothing to learn from anybody!" - the yelp of the true snob. "Look! I care nothing for the sacred cow! I smash her! I smash her!"

I can say that that "Cries and Whispers" and "Wild Strawberries" and "Fanny and Alexander", among others, have made my life richer and more interesting. And I have had good conversations about these films, and these led to observations from those I talked with about life that moved and sometimes surprised me.

Maybe one of the above jeerers at the funeral is right - maybe "most people" don't care about Bergman, and would all post here their indifference to his death, and sneer at his mourners, were they to read to the end of O'Hehir's encomium. I can't be bothered to try to convince people who hold so much contempt to open their minds. It's no shame to fold your arms suspiciously, though it's no honor either.

But for those who haven't seen a Bergman film in years, or who might never have seen one, and are willing, I say this: like any great artist, Bergman only gives to you if you open yourself up to an artistic experience. But what he offers then is really quite amazing.