perhaps you might have been a bit more explicit in your diary as to what you hoped would come in the comments, i.e. discussion of parallels between then and now, rather than a purely aesthetic discussion of the films' artistic merits.

Aesthetics can have political dimensions, cf. Godard's radical change in style as his politics changed.

The views of the critics referred to didn't just focus on aesthetic/stylistic issues, and their problem was, in some cases, that Bergman had little to say about the wider issues. This is not surprising, as it seems that his early experience in Germany and subsequent guilt about his admiration for Hitler (yes, he was young and just made a mistake, encouraged by a right-wing father), seems to have turned him off politics. Hence the focus on a few individuals and little on the context, apart from the obvious or the melodramatic, or his own concerns, e. a priest who talks about a silent god - cf. Winter Light, when he might have referred to the way the German clergy were in many cases enthusiastic supporters of the Nazis - for the same reason as Bergman's father - anti-communism.

Some younger Swedish critics and directors criticised Bergman for his general focus on individuals and failure to deal with political issues, e.g.:

In 1962 the filmmaker Bo Widerberg published a pamphlet titled Visionen i svensk film (Vision in the Swedish Cinema), which was intended as a clarion- call to the native film industry to shift to what Widerberg called a "horizontal' cinema, that is, a realistic cinema rooted in modern-day Swedish society. But the pamphlet took the form of what was to become a lifelong attack on the "vertical" non-realistic filmmaking of Ingmar Bergman.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/art_culture/film/bergman_sweden