viz.

Slate V has posted nine soap commercials shot by recently deceased film director Ingmar Bergman. As Dana Stevens, Slate’s film critic, points out in the commentary below, Bergman’s ads challenged the conventions of most commercials—in one case, Bergman depicts a character being injured by the product, Bris soap.

My reaction to the ads is that they make contemporary commercials seem tame and dull by comparison. It would be interesting to compare the ads to some others to see why that is. I wonder if part of the reason comes from the fact that I know who directed the ad, and that he was given complete control so that he could impose his own interests on the product’s marketing. (Does the Ridley Scott-directed 1984 ad for Apple have the same effect?) I can’t imagine a firm giving a director this much latitude today.