The critical reaction was a tad more complicated than that.
The excitement over Godard was also part of the excitement of the French New Wave. Godard was also a filmmaker whose work was in constant dialogue with the cinema that went before it. All Bergman seemed to care about was his personal sense of privation/angst and having all of his characters (whether male or female) be mouthpieces for it. One reason that THE VIRGIN SPRING is refreshing is that he didn't write the screenplay. Bergman was functioning in this instance as he did in the theater: as the director of the script of another person. (Wes Craven would remake the film as THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT in 1972). Among the early films, I also enjoy ALL THESE WOMEN and SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT -- respites from the flood of existential dread.
I like Bergman best between CRIES AND WHISPERS and FANNY AND ALEXANDER. He retired the death-of-god schtick (the pastor praying over Agnes' body in C&W is one of the great moments of self-parody in cinema) and began to study faces ever more intently. I recently re-screened SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE and it holds up very well: Nykvist's variable lighting makes it seem as if the instability of Marianne and Johann has infected the film itself.
But bringing Anna Asp into his artistic circle seems to have allowed him to create what I feel are his greatest films: AUTUMN SONATA; FANNY AND ALEXANDER; and AFTER THE REHEARSAL. Free of a tormented soul, Bergman can study how people torment (and possibly forgive) each other. In AUTUMN SONATA he also faced the challenge of working with Sweden's other great cinematic Bergman, the divine Ingrid. Having to write for a Hollywood star (something he had done only twice before and with poor results) liberated something in Bergman: he wrote not only from his own experience, but tapped into the public persona of his star as well. It was an invigorating combination, and the resuting film is the perfect manifestation of the chamber film approach he had been working on for so long (though I do squirm a bit at the obviousness of the crippled daughter. The best that you can hope for when Ingmar reaches for a symbol is that it won't be quite as heavy-handed as most of them usually are.) Oddly enough, Bergman himself disliked the film, feeling it was a parody of a Bergman film, but I think he might have dug even more deeply than he usually did and was shocked at how naked he had allowed himself to be on screen. Of the three, it might be my favorite.
He dug deep again for F&A which was the perfect cinematic home for Bergman's theatrical symbolism since the film dealt with two of the most theatrical arenas of life: church and stage (which can also be seen as the the twin poles of Bergman's artistic sensibility). All the usual Bergman turmoil is here, but counterpointed with a humor, pathos and tenderness that radiate over the entire film warming and deepening the usual frosty (sometimes pretentiously so) Bergman offering (a similar warm intensity pervades AS. "Woe is me" has been replaced by "It is a mess, but maybe there is a way out of it.")
AFTER THE REHEARSAL was a television film that looked at the end of an artist's life (just at F&A had looked at its beginnings). I have always thought of Henrik Vogler as a grown-up version of Alexander. The film is Bergman's last major cinematic statement on theatre, actors, directors and the process of creation (though he would go over this same ground in two volumes of autobiography).
He wrote more scripts which were filmed by others (including his son Daniel, Liv Ullman and Billie August), and even directed two more films, but Bergman never caught fire again quite the same way. His reputation should be higher than it is now, but I doubt it will ever reach its previous heights (does anybody suffer from an anguished soul any more?) But if cinematic modernism can be said to have had a high priest, Bergman certainly was it. As my friend David Ehrenstein said: I wonder if death looked like Bergman had imagined it?
Brian