Ingmar Bergman who died on 30 July 2007 aged 89 was a hugely respected Swedish film director who gained a popular following beyond art-house moviegoers.

Described by the British Film Institute as “one of the world's great film-makers” he is perhaps best known in Britain for his film The Seventh Seal (1957). Questioning the meaning of life, many of Mr Bergman’s films focused upon existentialism displaying unique insights into a particular character’s world.

Also a popular stage director he created a pattern of much admired work which began in the 1940s and continued until his final TV play in 2005.

Nominated for a total of nine Academy Awards throughout his career, which included several acknowledgements for his skill as a scriptwriter, Mr Bergman’s talents were best displayed as a foreign filmmaker.

Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born on 14 July 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden. The son of a priest, he grew up in the shadow of religion, a subject he would have conflicting issues with over the course of his film career.

His strict and dysfunctional childhood also helped fuel material for his films and it was whilst at the University of Stockholm that he began taking an interest in theatre and cinema.

Working as a trainee director at a Stockholm theatre in the early 1940s Mr Bergman turned his hand to writing plays, a number of which were well received, including Kaspers Dod (1942).

During this period Mr Bergman became the youngest theatre manager in Europe – a role he held at the Helsingborg Theatre. He wrote his first film screenplay in 1944, for Hets, directed by Alf Sjoberg.

His first film as a director was Kris (1946) a black and white picture focusing upon human relationships, a subject matter that would become synonymous with his work.

He managed to produce over a dozen films in his first ten years as a film director and achieved his biggest international success in his young career with Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) described by influential American film Critic Pauline Kael as “a nearly perfect work” of cinema.

Mr Bergman followed this, with The Seventh Seal (1955). It became a much admired film particularly amongst British film critics Barry Norman, Derek Malcolm and Mark Kermode who each nominated it as one of their top ten films ever made in a BFI poll in 2002.

It has since gained cult status and its reflections upon death have been parodied by amongst others, Woody Allen and Monty Python. Much less appreciated for his works in Sweden, Mr Bergman relied on film audiences across the world to embrace his films.

In 1971 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his contribution to film, despite claims as in Sweden, by some American critics, that his work was adjudged to portray the fragility of relationships as well as the image of women in the wrong light.

Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award for Cries and Whispers in 1974 he also notched up a Best Director nomination for his family saga Fanny and Alexander in 1984.

His darkest hour came when he was arrested for Tax evasion in Faro, in 1976. Despite the charges later being dropped he left Sweden in protest at his treatment only to return to take up a position as a stage director of the Royal Swedish Theatre.

Mr Bergman released an autobiography in 1988 which was followed by a film memoir about his life My Life in Film (1993). A major figure in the world of film, he married on five occasions and passed away at his home in Faro.