From ingmarbergman.se

In 1951 there was a conflict in the Swedish film industry. The production companies had declared a ban on filming in protest against the high rate of tax on entertainment. Recently remarried, Ingmar Bergman, found himself with three families to support, and his contract with the Gothenburg City Theatre had expired. In order to earn any income whatsoever that year, he agreed to direct nine commercial for Bris soap on behalf of Swedish Unilever. It seems more than a coincidence that Sweden’s most famous film director should be the one to take the country’s advertising to a higher plane: the Bris films were the most lavishly funded that the country had ever seen. Continue reading →

“Criterion” wrote:
Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson) always seemed like the perfect couple. But when Johan suddenly leaves Marianne for another woman, they are forced to confront the disintegration of their marriage. Shot in intense, intimate close-ups by master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, the film chronicles ten years of turmoil and love that bind the couple despite their divorce and subsequent marriages. Flawless acting and dialogue portray the brutal pain and uplifting peace that accompany a lifetime of loving.. Continue reading →

Ingmar Bergman’s gloomy but incisive 1961 classic about a woman’s descent into madness–and the inability of her family to mitigate her pain with love–is still a stunning work. Harriet Andersson plays Karin, a psychiatric patient newly released from a hospital and staying in the island home where she found some measure of security in childhood. Instead of getting on her feet, however, Karin begins disintegrating after realizing she no longer loves her physician husband (Max von Sydow) and is being rather coldly observed by her writer father (Gunnar Bjornstrand), whose distant fascination with her plight is recorded in his daily journal. Hearing voices, believing God to be a spider, and pursuing an incestuous relationship with her brother, Karin slips into an inexorable decline, objectively witnessed by those too emotionally frozen to help. The first of Bergman’s trilogy on themes of faith and isolation (the other entries being Winter Light and The Silence), Through a Glass Darkly finds the legendary Swedish filmmaker at an artistic and philosophical peak. –Tom Keogh Continue reading →