1984 - THE MAKING OF FANNY AND ALEXANDER, a documentary

Sensing this would probably be his last film, Ingmar Bergman had a cameraman named Arne Carlsson follow him around while he filmed Fanny and Alexander.  The resulting documentary with the less than clever title The Making of Fanny and Alexander was the result. The film is sort of fascinating and probably of more interest for film scholars especially those who are admirers of Ingmar Bergman.

The film starts out with Bergman and his cast at a meet and greet where Bergman announces he is just a director this time and doesn't remember any of the script they are about to film. This is a rather dubious claim since he wrote the film.

We get a lengthy scene of Bergman staging a scene on the Ekdahl family set and we see Bergman working with the young actors playing Fanny and Alexander.  We also see cinematographer Sven Nykvist behind the camera setting up the lights and the camera angles.  Sven Nykvist was clearly an important collaborator for Bergman and at times he almost seems like a co-director.

Probably the most poignant and interesting part of this film is Bergman directing one of his old colleagues the actor Gunnar Björnstrand.  Björnstrand  is clearly suffering from memory loss.  Bergman is extremely patient with him as Björnstrand blows take after take.

 

Again, an interesting film but it's probably best to keep in mind since Bergman took a director's credit on this we are only going to see what Bergman wants us to see.  Considering the big cast and the logistics of filming such a long film I doubt things went as smoothly as he seems to indicate.

The running time is 110 minutes.

1982 - FANNY AND ALEXANDER, the extended version

Hang in there we're getting to the end of this Ingmar Bergman mini film fest.  With Fanny and Alexander, Bergman announced this would be his final film.  Hyperbole being what it is from film directors,  he went on to make a few more films although they were primarily for Swedish Television.  It's probably more accurate to say this was Bergman's final theatrical film.

In recent years Bergman had been challenged to find financing for his films.  In order to get this film made he agreed to make two versions, a television mini series that runs over five hours and a theatrical version that runs almost three hours.  Apparently Bergman preferred the television version of this film.

 

The film tells the story of the Ekdahls an upper class family living in Uppsala,  Sweden.  The Ekdahls own a theater which is managed by one of the sons of Helena Ekdahl (the matriarch of the family) named Oscar.  Oscar and his wife Emilie in addition to running the theater are also performers. They have two children, Fanny and Alexander.  Alexander is a boy with a very vivid imagination which will bring him a lot of trouble. 

The film starts with an extended scene of a Christmas party at the Ekdahl home where all is happiness and joy.  But this is an Ingmar Bergman film and in the second act of the film Oscar suffers a heart attack and passes away.  Cue the entrance of the chief villain of this film the Lutheran Bishop Edvard Vergérus a character so frightening he could be in a Wes Craven film.  For reasons that would take to long to explain and are actually kind of unbelievable the grieving widow Helena ends up marrying the bishop and moves into his very austere residence along with her two children.

The film gets very harrowing at this point as the Bishop turns out to be a tyrannical figure who takes out most of his anger on Alexander.  In some very brutal scenes, the bishop physically punishes Alexander to the point of drawing blood from the ten year old child.  The remainder of the film involves the Ekdahl's  attempts to rescue Fanny, Alexander and Helena from the Bishop's household.

At this point in Bergman's career a lot was known about his early life growing up with a father who was a strict Lutheran minister.  The character of the Bishop is clearly based on Bergman's father and Alexander is obviously a stand in for a young Ingmar Bergman.

Fanny and Alexander is one of Bergman's best looking films.  The photography by Sven Nyquist is excellent and the sets and costumes are a real treat to look at.  The film is a mixture of new and old actors who Bergman had worked with in the past.  Jari Kulle, Gunnar Björnstrand,  Erland Josephson, and Harriett Andersson were part of his famous stock company.  Incredibly Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow turned down roles in this film.

Fanny and Alexander is in many ways a rehash of Bergman's favorite themes but it's a well made and involving film even in the extended television version.

The film was written by Ingmar Bergman.  The running time for the theatrical version is 188 minutes, the television version runs 312 minutes.

1958 - BRINK OF LIFE, aka SO CLOSE TO LIFE

Three pregnant women about to give birth meet and bond in a hospital ward.  That's about it for the plot of this soap operish film.  If you are looking for a film celebrating childbirth you have certainly come to the wrong film, this is an Ingmar Bergman film.

This film is unbelievably depressing even for a Bergman film.  All the relationships between the women and their husbands are shall we say kind of lacking.  The plot line moves from one angst ridden pregnant woman to another and needless to say the film does not resolve itself with a happy ending.

If the film has anything going for it, it's the cast of performers Bergman assembled for this film.  Ingrid Thulin, Eva Dahlbeck, Bibi Andersson, Max Von Sydow and Erland Josephson are all members of Ingmar Bergman's famous "stock company."

 

It's difficult to see what Bergman saw in this pointless story.  This is one of his rare films where he doesn't take a writing credit.  Unaccountably the film won several awards at the Cannes Film festival for Bergman, Thulin, Dahlbeck and Andersson.  I won't argue that the film is well acted and well made, but it is an awfully depressing slog to sit through.  However all the women are very good at crying on cue.

The film was written by Ulla Isaksson, the running time is 84 minutes.

1955 - DREAMS, an Ingmar Bergman drama about two women

Ingmar Bergman writes and directs a film about the love lives of two women.  Eva Dahlbeck is the head of a modeling agency and Harriet Andersson is one of her top models.  They both have unresolved issues revolving around their love lives.

  

Dahlbeck is involved with a married man and she apparently wants him to leave his wife for her,  Harriet Andersson is in a relationship with a man she finds unexciting.  On a trip to another city for a photo spread both women come to realizations that resolve their relationships.

 

Ingmar Bergman was always considered one of the best writer/directors when it came to roles for women in his pictures.  However in this instance the situations seem a little low key and in some ways unimportant.  The film is directed with his usual skill, at this point in his career Bergman was an accomplished filmmaker.

However it didn't hurt to have two very good performers appear in this film.  Harriet Andersson always brought a sensual quality to the Bergman films that she appeared in.  Eva Dahlbeck worked with Bergman frequently and she was always a strong presence in his films.  She's kind of forgotten today in the world of Ingmar Bergman film admirers, but she was just as important to his films as Liv Ullmann or Bibi Andersson.

For the most part Dreams is a minor but well made Bergman film and is probably more a film for Ingmar Bergman film fanatics who need to see everything he made

The running time is 87 minutes.

1958 - THE MAGICIAN - another interesting Bergman film.

It's science versus spiritualism, man vs woman, and Ingmar Bergman vs his previous films with a couple of pot shots at the existence of god that are frequently found in a Bergman film.

A near mute Max Von Sydow is the leader of a performance troupe touring Sweden in what appears to be the mid 1800's.  The troupe ends up a village where they are detained and questioned by the authorities particularity a doctor named Vergerus played by another Bergman regular Gunnar Björnstrand.

 

This films entertains because Bergman is such a good filmmaker.  He makes the encounters between the performers and the authorities interesting and at times thought provoking.  Bergman is also good at throwing in a little romance and sex courtesy of yet another one of his regular performers, Bibi Andersson who is always a very welcome addition in a Bergman film.

 

I don't think I would count The Magician as one of Bergman's greatest films like Wild Strawberries, Smiles of a Summer Night or The Seventh Seal, but it is a very good film. 

Written by Ingmar Bergman, the running time is 107 minutes.

2003 - SARABAND, Ingmar Bergman's final film.

At 84 years old Ingmar Bergman comes out of retirement and writes and directs this father /daughter drama and photographs it with a high definition video camera hardly the work of an old fuddy duddy.  In the supplemental content on the DVD, Bergman a man in his mid 80's is quite alert and spry.  In fact he looks better than Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann playing two of the four leads in this film.

Saraband has been called a sequel to Scenes From a Marriage but that's probably pushing it a bit.  True Josephson and Ullmann  are playing Johan and Marianne the names of their characters from Scenes From a Marriage but they don't really seem to act like the same people from that film.   Johan and Marianne are more observers than active participants in  this film.  But I suppose having two of his closest collaborators was important to Bergman for this film.

 

Saraband is basically focused on Johan's son Henrik and Henrik's daughter Karin.  Henrik is mentoring Karin on the cello in order for her to get a scholarship to a music academy.  However Henrik seems to have what they call an unhealthy interest in his daughter.  Henrik is also one of those tormented Bergman characters who you would probably call a loser.

 

This is a good Bergman film and I don't think anyone needs to make apologizes for Bergman's age.  Bergman was always good at portraying his characters thoughts, desires and insecurities throughout his career and this film is no exception.  There is also a prevailing feeling of death throughout the film which I suppose is not surprising coming from Bergman at this point in his life.  Saraband is an interesting and good film to wrap up his impressive film career.

Written by Ingmar Bergman, the running time is 112 minutes.

1984 - AFTER THE REHEARSAL, a film late in the career of Ingmar Bergman

 After announcing that Fanny and Alexander would be his last film before he retired from film making After The Rehearsal showed up a year later,  so much for truth in advertising. This is what is called a chamber film, it has only three characters and for the most part is a real talk fest as a lot of Bergman's  later films got to be.  You can't read the subtitles fast enough to keep up with the Swedish dialog in the film.

 

After The Rehearsal is about theater director Henrik Vogler,  (played by one of Bergman's stock company regulars Erland Josephson) staging a version of Strindberg's "A Dream Play."  Bergman had a great affinity for this play as he frequently refered to it in his other films and even staged a version of it for Swedish television.  As Vogler reviews his notes from the latest rehearsal a young actress, Anna Egerman shows up supposedly looking for a bracelet she lost.  The role of Anna Egerman is played by a very young Lena Olin who Bergman was very high on at the time. What Anna Egerman is really at the theater for is to confront Vogler about the affair he had with her mother Rakel Egerman (played by another Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin) years ago.

Let the fun and games begin as Vogler and Anna Egerman square off about the affair.  The mother shows up at the theater as a ghost or memory or something.  After all this is a Bergman film. 

As Bergman began to wind down his career he gravitated towards making films for television.  His kind of searing emotional dramas were getting harder to finance and he rightly figured that television was a way to keep working.  Bergman besides being an excellent film maker was also a talented theater director.

 

 

After The Rehearsal appears to be a summation of Bergman's time in the theater, staging plays and working with actors. In a way it's an old man's film since Bergman seems to be reflecting about his past life, career and relationships.  If you are a fan of this director you will probably find this film interesting otherwise it's kind of a slog to sit through but with some interesting scenes.  The film is well regarding by a number of critics.

Written by Ingmar Bergman, the running time is 70 minutes. 

1957 - WILD STRAWBERRIES, Bergman’s classic film about old age

 In the film business when you're hot you're hot and Ingmar Bergman was burning up in the late 1950's.  He was entering one of the most creative periods in his career.  Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal had been very successful for him.  The Virgin Spring and his "God Trilogy" were in his future.  Bergman had been thinking a lot about the passage of time and memory when he wrote the screenplay for this film.

 

Wild Strawberries is about an old physician Isak Borg, played by 78 year old director Victor Sjöström who is literally on a journey that causes him to recall his youth while traveling to relieve an honorary university degree.  Most of his memories are about the disappointments in life which he is now attempting to come to terms with as he reaches the end of his existence.

 

This is an extremely well made film.  The black and white photography by Gunner Fischer is excellent.  The performers are from Bergman's famous "stock company." Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand and Max von Sydow in a small role as a gas station attendant of all things.  They are at their usual high caliber of acting for a Bergman film.

 

But the film is in many ways a tribute to Victor Sjöström.  Sjöström was one of the most important Scandinavian filmmakers dating back to the silent era.  Sjöström even for a time worked for MGM of all places.  He made a couple of masterpieces in America, The Scarlet Letter and The Wind with Lillian Gish before he returned to Sweden.  He was also a mentor to Ingmar Bergman at the beginning of his career.

Wild Strawberries is considered one of Bergman's masterworks and more importantly one of his most accessible films.  It held up very well on my current viewing.

Written by Ingmar Bergman, the running time is 91 minutes.

1961 - THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, the first of Bergman's "God" trilogy.

Bergman filmed this chamber piece with only four actors, Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow and Lars Passgård members of his famous stock company.  The film was shot on the island of Faro by Sven Nykvist.  Faro would show up in many of Bergman's later films and it was the place where Bergman eventually retired.

This is a very grim and sometimes harrowing film.  Harriet Andersson in a very intense performance, is the wife of Max von Sydow and the daughter of Gunnar Bjornstand.  She is slowly descending into madness and dragging her brother played by Lars Passgard with her.  The film deals with the interrelationships and consequences of her emotional instability among the characters.  The film explores their relationship to "God," if even there even is a god.

Not exactly a fun viewing experience, but Ingmar Bergman could always present this kind of intense drama in and interesting and watchable way.

 

This was the first of his trilogy on the absence of God.  The second and third films respectively, Winter Light and in particular The Silence are even more forbidding.  The series is probably for serious admirers of Bergman as the films are very real intense viewing experience.

Bergman as usual wrote the film and the running time is 91 minutes.

1969 - THE PASSION OF ANNA, aka "A Passion"

I suppose there is a "been there seen it" aspect to this film,  However Ingmar Bergman was one of the greatest writer/directors in the history of cinema, so what we have here is an excellent film about alienation and loneliness made by a master.

 

On the island of Faro, Max Von Sydow plays a man living alone after the failure of his marriage.  He becomes acquainted with another couple played by Bergman stock company regulars 'Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson.  They in turn introduce him to a friend of theirs whose husband and son died in a traffic accident.  She is played by Bergman muse Liv Ullmann.  The acting is at a very high caliber with that cast.

Throughout the film the actors step out of character and discuss their characters in a Brechtian distancing technique that sounds pretentious but actually works rather well as a dramatic device.

 

If you are familiar with Bergman  you can see a lot of his themes played out in this film.  Loneliness, emotional stress, the failure to connect with other people etc.  I don't want to make this sound like an "eat your vegetables" film.  One of Bergman's great skills was to take serious themes and present them in an interesting and engaging way.

 

 Written by Bergman as usual, the running time is 101 minutes.

1975 - THE MAGIC FLUTE, Ingmar Bergman's flm of Mozart's opera.

Ingmar Bergman films The Magic Flute on a sound stage in a TV studio.

Expecting the worst, an opera filmed in a claustrophobic studio emphasizing the theatricality of the production and translated into Swedish from the original German.  Ingmar Bergman, the master of existential despair should have had a major musical disaster on his hands.

However, Bergman was also a very smart director who took this property and with a high level of skill filmed a very lively version of Mozart's opera.  There are so many clever and witty touches through out the film that one tends to forget that Bergman was also a director of very sophisticated comedies during his career.  He was also a noted director of actors and in this version of The Magic Flute, he gets very naturalistic performances out of larger than life opera performers.

In the end the real auteur of The Magic Flute is W.A Mozart. Even if this film had been an absolute disaster, it would have been impossible to screw up the wonderful music in this opera.

This is one of Bergman's finest films.

135 minutes.

1976 - FACE TO FACE, bad film from a great filmmaker.

Ingmar Bergman looks at the emotional breakdown of a psychiatrist played by one of his favorite actors, Liv Ullmann.  This was originally a four part television series.  Bergman cut it down for theatrical presentation but something important must have been left out, the film is pretty awful.

What you get for your viewing pleasure are a lot of closeups of Liv Ullmann screaming for almost two hours.  After watching this film, there is no doubt in my mind that she can act because she acts up (overacts?) a storm in this film.  She has an extended monologue where she basically plays a character who is possessed by her mean grandmother, (don't ask).   It's impressive to watch but ultimately completely pointless. 

Like a lot of veteran directors in the 1970's, Bergman seemed to struggle finding material that he could completely connect with.  It's hard to believe this piece of pseudo psychological clap trap got past his quality control, but since Bergman wrote his own screenplays as well as directing them he is ultimately the one to blame.  Even the dream sequences are not up to par. 

The film is shot mostly in close ups and medium shots, which is probably due to it's television origins, it's claustrophobic as hell to watch.  The end of the film where Ullmann realizes that "love conquers all," is so ridiculous it's hard to believe that Ingmar Bergman is taking this film seriously.

114 minutes, written by Ingmar Bergman.

1977 - THE SERPENT'S EGG. grim, grim, grim, grim, grim

"Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here"

 

Close to the bottom of the barrel for the pessimistic films of Ingmar Bergman.  The Serpent's Egg is one of the few films where Bergman attempted to film in English.  He hired David Carradine to play an American trapeze artist stuck in pre Nazi Germany along with Liv Ullmann.  The film is almost two hours of unrelenting doom and gloom from the dour Bergman.

On the positive side, if there is a positive side, the production looks good, the photography by Sven Nykvist is excellent.  But people shouldn't have to watch films just to look at the sets and pretty pictures.  This film is for Ingmar Bergman scholars only and then I wouldn't even recommend it to them.

Towards the end of the film the actor Glynn Turman shows up as a jive spouting black guy in a "what the hell is he doing here" moment.  This is about the only funny thing in the film since his character is completely out of place in the film.

There is a mention of an "Inspector Lohmann" who is searching for a serial killer in Berlin, in what is a reference to Fritz Lang's M, a film that is a whole lot better than The Serpent's Egg.

However sitting through this film just to see these two pieces of interest is not worth anyone's time. 

120 this went into the garbage minutes.

1980 - FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES, Bergman film is not a comedy

Made in Germany during Ingmar Bergman's exile from Sweden, this is a fascinating failure.  The film follows a couple of secondary characters from Scenes From A Marriage and has an interesting story structure, jumping backwards and forwards in time. 

Peter and Katrina Egermann are one messed up married couple.  When the film opens Peter is seeing a prostitute who he ends up murdering.  The question for the viewer is why? 

Bergman directs

From the Life of the Marionettes, has a fascinating look to it.  The film starts and ends in color. The middle section is in black and white.  The dream sequences are photographed with the Egermann's nude on a completely white background.  Bergman is also the master of the film closeup when it comes to emphasizing the psychological or emotional makeup of his characters.  This is a really well made film. 

The problem Bergman ran into with this film was in the character of Peter Egermann.  Bergman's explanation for Egermann's murder of the prostitute is that Peter Egermann is a repressed homosexual who has been dominated by women his entire life.  This seems a rather dubious notion to hang a brutal murder on.  I haven't spent anytime around repressed homosexuals dominated by their wives and mothers but I kind of doubt this leads to killing sprees.

An interesting failure for Bergman.  A couple of attempts at something new visually but a weak story idea for a psychological study.

104 minutes.

1963 - THE SILENCE, Ingmar Bergman's film is unbelievably grim.

Ingmar Bergman's film is the story of two sisters stuck in a strange European town in the middle of what appears to be a civil war.  The sisters are a study in alienation.  One of them is dying, the other has a son and resents her dying sister.  The film has intense black and white photography, lots of scenes of isolation, a creepy setting in a strange hotel, (which reminds me of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining)  and a bunch of dwarfs.  In other words this is a typical Ingmar Bergman film. 

There is a lot of sex and eroticism in this film but trust me absolutely no one is having a good time.   This is another example of the kind of film that screams "artistic foreign film" with some dirty stuff in it.  From the opening austere credits at the beginning of the film to the almost complete lack of a background score, this film was never going to be anyone's idea of a popcorn movie. 

I'll go with the prevailing interpretation that the two sisters represent the intellectual and sensual sides of the personality.  I also believe that these two women actually are different parts of Bergman's persona.  Ingmar Bergman the chilly intellectual attempting to understand his place in the universe and what the role of God or a divine presence is in his rationalism. Or Ingmar Bergman the sensual Scandinavian who wants to let his his Freudian ego run amok.

Bergman was married 5 times and had major relationships with 3 of his primary actresses.  The film Trolosa is pretty much an autobiographical account of the mess he made out of one married woman's life.  Bergman is a fascinating guy.

The Silence is one of the reasons I stopped watching Ingmar Bergman's films over twenty years ago.
 
The film is unquestionably well made and acted but after a while watching Bergman work out his emotional obsessions on screen finally got to be a major chore.  Ingmar Bergman's unrelentingly dour view of people and himself finally exhausted me.

96 depressing minutes

1966 - PERSONA Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece walks the line between great and pretentious

Whatever Bergman was up to in this enigmatic puzzle will probably continue to be a mystery as long as this film is viewed.  Bergman's film technique reminds the audience that they are watching a film.  At one point in Persona, the film literally begins to burn during the story. 

Liv Ullmann is a stage actress who has a nervous breakdown during a performance.  Since this is a Bergman film, the play is Electra.  Ullmann decides not to speak anymore and the film focuses on the relationship of Ullmann and her nurse Bibi Andersson, who confides in the mute Ullmann in what are extended monologues.

At first the film seems to be about Ullmann as an artist and her inability to relate to the turmoil of the real world around her.  The film then veers off into an examination of the character of the nurse. There is a particularly erotic scene as the nurse relates to Ullmann an encounter she had with two teenage boys on a beach. Andersson apparently did an uncredited rewrite on that scene.

Finally the film enters into some very strange territory with Bergman adding a doppelganger theme as he begins to merge the personalities of the women together, literally and visually. 

Bergman reaches deep inside himself with images and thoughts that only he could have explained but as far as I know never did,  perhaps he didn't understand them himself.  Persona's fascination comes from great photography, excellent acting, particularly from Andersson and brilliant direction.

Bergman directs Persona

A mystery of the mind put on film.

85 minutes.

1960 - THE VIRGIN SPRING, Ingmar Bergman shows how to make a film

Ingmar Bergman's story of revenge shows a filmmaker completely on top of his game.  The Virgin Spring was Bergman's version of an old Swedish legend about a young girl raped and murdered and her father's subsequent act of vengeance against her killers.

Bergman and his cinematographer Sven Nyquist didn't do anything wrong in this film.  Each image and edit were carefully chosen to tell the story and get the point of view across to the viewer.  Ingmar Bergman also was smart enough to use one of favorite actors Max Von Sydow.  Von Sydow brings his  brooding acting style to the part of the father.  It became fashionable to make fun of Von Sydow for a certain kind of acting in a Bergman film but very few actors could bring his kind of authority to a film role as intense as this. 

Bergman was always a filmmaker who thought big when it came to themes in his films.  The Virgin Spring has his usual interests in religion and his character's mixed response to it.  But Bergman was also a smart enough man not to let his interests overwhelm the film.  Even the final scene with the miracle of the actual spring flowing from the dead girl is carefully under played. 

A lot has been made about the father's vengeance on the three killers being more horrible than their actual rape and murder of his daughter, but Bergman kept the film very tough, the killers are not remotely sympathetic individuals.  It was hard not to see how Von Sydow would not want revenge. 

A lot of discussion has been wasted about how Last House On The Left is a remake of The Virgin Spring.  Last House On The Left is strictly a horror film. The Virgin Spring is a greater horror film since it deals with how justice, vengeance and violence get wrapped up in an uncomfortable mix of Christianity.
 
Another excellent film made by a person who knew what he was doing behind the camera.

89 minutes.