| Bergman's modest assessment of himself as a mere craftsman reminds me of how our culture (especially the snotty subculture of the academy) looks down on craft literacy. (Bergman, by the way, seems refreshingly snotless. He even admits to watching - and enjoying - television!) My father's father was a craftsman. He made beautiful individual pieces of furniture. Mass production was introduced in the local furniture factory - the only industry in Lochwinnoch. He resented having to become a cog in a wheel to earn his living and emigrated to Australia. Ursula Franklin does a fine job of distinguishing between holistic technologies (in which an individual craftsman creates the whole product) and prescriptive technologies (in which the product is created by a group of people each doing a specialized part under supervision) and showing how the latter leads to a culture of compliance as power shifts from the craftsman to the manager. The distinction applies nicely to the films made by craftsmen like Bergman and other auteurs and the mass-produced films turned (churned?) out by Hollywood. My grandfather, by the way, eventually returned to Lochwinnoch and devoted his declining years to carving violins and giving them away but only to people who demonstrated that they could play them well. Congratulations on a well-crafted book.
Sincerely,
Your colleague, Scot
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