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Bergmanesque to Shyamalian: A guide to auteurist adjectives

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Times Staff Writer

With the death of Ingmar Bergman, film has lost one of its great auteurs.

Bergman was one of the few directors distinctive enough to inspire his own adjective. The term “Bergmanesque” describes a specific worldview -- a bleak psychological chronicle of people living in a world that God has abandoned --evidenced in films the director never even made.

There are other directors who have similarly been honored with having their names turned into adjectives -- Hitchcockian (smart psychological thriller), Wellesian (strong visual style) and Altmanesque (rambling, character driven).

But there are other directors who have not yet been adjectified but whose very specific point of view, way of telling stories and use of cinematic language beg for critics to add their last names to descriptions.

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And so, in our Latimes.comian way, are some of our own director-derived adjectives that we think should be added to the film criticism books.

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