“Liv Ullmann’s directorial debut is a beguiling and bittersweet tale about the yearning to be free… “
Synopsis:
Copenhagen at the end of the nineteenth century. Sofie is a beautiful and cultured 28-year-old who lives at home with her parents Frederikke and Semmy. They only want the best for her and worry that she will end up an old maid like her three aunts with whom they share the weekly Sabbath meal…Read More »
August Strindberg felt that the entire world had gone crazy. The “norms” of class hierarchies and gender roles were starting to shatter, and he saw chaos pouring into that vacuum. His 1888 play “Miss Julie” is the prime example, although it’s evident in all of his other disturbing, great modern works. “Miss Julie” plays in almost real-time, taking place in one setting over the course of a single evening, Midsummer Night’s Eve, the one long night of the year when the classes blend together, when rich dance and drink with poor, when the boundaries have blurred. There are only three characters in the play, and it opens with Jean, an upwardly-striving valet remarking to his pal and sort-of girlfriend, the kitchen maid, that “Miss Julie is crazy!” Miss Julie is the daughter of the count in whose manor they both work.Read More »
Renowned actress-turned-director Liv Ullmann helms this bleak, nuanced film about marriage and betrayal penned by legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. The story is straightforward — Marianne Vogler (Lena Endre) is a beautiful actress who is married to Markus (Thomas Hanzon), whose job as an orchestra conductor requires numerous concerts abroad, and who dotes on their young daughter Isabelle (Michelle Gylemo). Yet when Marianne has an affair with family friend David (Kirster Henriksson), a film director with a volcanic temper and little regard to those around him, the fallout destroys the marriage and brings grief and suffering to all involved, particularly Isabelle. Ullman and Bergman frame this plot with a tale about an elderly director named Bergman (Erland Josephson, who played opposite Ullman in Bergman’s landmark Scenes from a Marriage) who is trying to write a script about infidelity. In his austerely decorated house on a remote island, Bergman invites an actress, who may or may not be a figment of his imagination, to breathe life into the character of Marianne. The actress tells Bergman of Marianne’s story through flashbacks. One evening, on the closing night of the play that Marianne was in — and while Markus is abroad — David arrives for dinner with her and ultimately sleeps, platonically, in her bed. This unplanned intimacy soon leads to a full blown affair, including a three week romantic getaway to Paris. When Markus finally discovers the couple in flagrante delicto, he demands an immediate divorce and custody of their daughter. This film was screened in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. -AllmovieRead More »
By Liv Ullmann
(Translated by the author in colloboration with Gerry Bothmer and Erik Friis)
Published by Knopf, 1977
(Origianly published in Norwegian as Forandringen, 1976)
Quote:
She opens herself to us as she writes about working with Bergman (“No studio is as silent as his… To film with Ingmar is long stretches of happiness where everything seems real”): about living with Bergman (“His dream was the woman who had been created in one peice, but I crumbled into bits and pieces if he wasn’t careful”):about travelling with him: about his monumental genius and idiosyncrasies; She lets us feel the almost overwhelming flow of her own feelings for her young daughter; She tells us about her first love, about the husband she left, the family she came from, the people she relies on..Read More »