Ingmar Bergman

  • Ingmar Bergman – Sommarnattens leende AKA Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) (HD)

    1951-1960ComedyIngmar BergmanRomanceSweden

    In Sweden at the turn of the century, members of the upper class and their servants find themselves in a romantic tangle that they try to work out amidst jealousy and heartbreak.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Fängelse AKA Prison AKA The Devil’s Wanton (1949)

    Ingmar Bergman1941-1950DramaSweden

    Synopsis:
    A movie director is approached by his old math teacher with a great movie idea: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. The director rejects the idea, but subsequent events in the life of a writer, a friend of the director’s, and a young prostitute he loves seem to prove the math teacher’s idea.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Backanterna aka Bacchae (1993)

    1991-2000DramaIngmar BergmanPerformanceSweden

    Backanterna is a recording of Bergman’s production of the staged opera Bacchae, a transposition of Euripides’ classical drama written for an amphitheater into a performance designed for the most intimate of stages, the TV screen, with music by Daniel Bortz. The original Euripedes text was re-worked for Bergman’s production, and the bacchae themselves became the focus of the action. Instead of an anonymous group, Bergman turned the women into individuals who each behave and perform in an individual way. In other words, the group was an individualized collective, portrayed by carefully selected soloists. Bergman also made an addition, creating a 14th baccha, Talatta, a non-speaking dance role that functioned as the dynamic doppelganger for Dionysus. Bergman used a minimalist stage which was made to look like a black box with a simple grey platform serving as acting space, placing focus on the vocal and stylized movement of the actors.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Skammen AKA Shame (1968)

    1961-1970DramaIngmar BergmanSwedenWar

    Quote:
    Ingmar Bergman’s Shame is at once an examination of the violent legacy of World War II and a scathing response to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann star as musicians living in quiet retreat on a remote island farm, until the civil war that drove them from the city catches up with them there. Amid the chaos of the military struggle, vividly evoked by pyrotechnics and by Sven Nykvist’s handheld camera work, the two are faced with impossible moral choices that tear at the fabric of their relationship. This film, which contains some of the most devastating scenes in Bergman’s oeuvre, shows the impact of war on individual lives.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Beröringen aka The Touch (1971)

    1971-1980DramaIngmar BergmanSweden

    Quote:
    Bergman’s little-seen English-language film starring Elliott Gould and Bibi Andersson, which charts the course of a doomed affair, earned mixed reviews on release in 1971 and was quickly overshadowed by his subsequent works – but it’s time to recognise it as a major entry in the director’s canon.

    It’s unsurprising that many myths and misconceptions have arisen surrounding Ingmar Bergman, that of the terminally gloomy Swede being merely the most prevalent. Here, after all, is someone acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time yet viewed by those none too familiar with his body of work as a whole as a forbiddingly lofty, aloof philosopher rather than an artist or entertainer. (Even a feature in last month’s Sight & Sound claimed that some of Bergman’s films might today “be considered so wilfully opaque and mired in symbolism as to be past the point of parody”.)Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Trollflöjten AKA The Magic Flute (1975)

    1971-1980FantasyIngmar BergmanPerformanceSweden

    Quote:
    This scintillating screen version of Mozart’s beloved opera shows Bergman’s deep knowledge of music and his gift for expressing it in filmic terms. Casting some of Europe’s finest soloists—among them Josef Köstlinger, Ulrik Cold, and Håkan Hagegård—the director lovingly recreated the baroque theater of the Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm to stage the story of the prince Tamino (Köstlinger) and his zestful sidekick Papageno (Hagegård), who seek to save a beautiful princess (Irma Urrila) from the clutches of evil. A celebration of love, forgiveness, and the brotherhood of man, The Magic Flute is considered by many to be the most exquisite opera film ever made.Read More »

  • Bille August – Den goda viljan AKA The Best Intentions (1991)

    1991-2000Bille AugustDramaIngmar BergmanSwedenTV

    Scripted (but not directed) by Ingmar Bergman, Best Intentions is a multilayered backwards glance at the courtship of Bergman’s own parents. Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler) is a struggling theology student in the year 1909. His intended, Anna Aakerbloom (Pernilla August, who married director Bille August while the film was in progress) is from a well-to-do family. Despite the expected class differences and personality clashes, love-or at least mutual understanding-prevails. But after a harsh, spare few years as the wife of a clergyman, Anna yearns for the more bountiful pleasures of her family home. Bergman writes himself into the proceedings as a mewling infant. The current three-hour theatrical version of Best Intentions (original title: Den Goda Viljan) was simultaneously prepared as a six-hour TV miniseries, which ran in Europe, Scandanavia, and Japan.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Såsom i en Spegel AKA Through a Glass Darkly (1961) (HD)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaIngmar BergmanSweden

    Synopsis:

    Recently released from a mental hospital; Karin rejoins her emotionally disconnected family and their island home, only to slip from reality as she begins to believe she is being visited by God.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Scener ur ett äktenskap AKA Scenes from a Marriage [Theatrical Cut] (1973)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaIngmar BergmanSweden

    Quote:
    Scenes from a Marriage chronicles the many years of love and turmoil that bind Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson), tracking their relationship as it progresses through a number of successive stages: matrimony, infidelity, divorce, and subsequent partnerships. Originally conceived as a five-hour, six-part television miniseries, the film is also presented in its three-hour theatrical cut. Shot on 16 mm in intense, intimate close-ups by cinematographer Sven Nykvist and featuring flawless performances by Ullmann and Josephson, Bergman’s emotional X-ray reveals the intense joys and pains of a complex bond.Read More »

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