The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter Special Edition: Happy Birthday, Ingmar Bergman

If we were to publish our entire review of The Criterion Collection’s Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, it would run a full ten pages and we wouldn’t have any room for any other reviews in the monthly DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter, so we have chosen instead to publish the review as a Special Edition, on the occasion of Bergman’s 106^th birthday today!  Enjoy!

Criterion’s Ingmar Bergman festival

The Criterion Collection has released a massive boxed set of Ingmar Bergman movies, presenting roughly forty films on thirty Blu-ray platters, Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (UPC# 715515221917, $300).  All of Bergman’s major films are included, with just one exception.  Weighing almost seven pounds, the jacket is bulkier than most coffee table books and indeed, the set is accompanied by a paperbound coffee table book celebrating Bergman and his films.  Like Criterion’s Essential Fellini box (Feb 24), the discs are arrayed in a book-like album with two platters on each page, and are numbered in a suggested order.  Unlike the Fellini box, the films are not arranged chronologically.  Rather, like Criterion’s The Complete Films of Agnes Varda (Apr 23), they are organized as if one were attending a month-long festival, with different ‘rhyming’ programming on every page.  To further guide the viewing, some films are identified as, ‘Opening Night,’ ‘Centerpiece 1,’ ‘Centerpiece 2,’ ‘Centerpiece 3’ and ‘Closing Night.’  Hence, where one could readily watch the Fellini box in a marathon couple of days or in a leisurely week, and absorb the Varda box in a similar amount of time, it is best to take in the Bergman set on a much longer timeline, with breaks between the different ‘festival’ demarcations.  Including commentaries and the supplementary features (but not the occasional alternate English language tracks), the set contains about 120 hours of programming (at the bargain price of $2.50 an hour…).  All of the films have optional English subtitles, and all are in Swedish except where noted.  All of the programs have reasonably clean monophonic sound except where noted, as well.  We should also point out that the films contain a frightful number of scenes where people smoke.

Now if we were going to program a Bergman festival, and indeed, if we were going to stage ANY sort of festival of foreign films for relative newcomers to be introduced to the genre, we would start with Bergman’s wonderful 1955 Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende), and since great minds think alike, that is exactly what Criterion has done on platter 1.  Set at the very beginning of the Twentieth Century, thus beguiling the viewer with its period setting from the get go, the film is about adults acting foolishly in the pursuit of love and is an exquisite blend of charming humor and poignant reflection.  More importantly, while it is structured like a farce, the most significant component of every scene is character, so that whether it is during the beginning, the middle or the end of the film, the delightful plot is secondary in importance to the feelings and psychologies of the characters in each scene.  Every moment is about a character learning, changing or trying to understand feelings, and you are so riveted to their struggles you almost do not notice the wonderful karma the 109-minute film conveys as a whole, settling over you like an unending twilight.

Harriet Andersson and Gunmar Björnstrand star, with Ulla Jacobsson, Eva Dahlbeck, Margit Carlqvist and Jarl Kulle.  Bergman regular Bibi Andersson has a bit part.  We reviewed Criterion’s initial Blu-ray release in Jul 12, and the transfer appears to be similar if not the same.  The squared full screen black-and-white image is free of wear and is finely detailed.  The cinematography is a touch grainy at times and so the image does not appear smooth, but the clarity of the performers’ faces is free of distortion and the period setting is exquisitely communicated.  The special features that appeared on the BD are carried over, including a Swedish trailer, a 4-minute talk by Bergman and a 17-minute discussion of the film by Criterion’s go-to Bergman guy, Peter Cowie, and Bergman associate Jörn Donner.

Criterion had released a DVD Eclipse collection entitled Early Bergman (May 07) and one of the films that appeared in that set, his 1946 Crisis (Crix) appears on platter 2.  Bergman’s first film, it is a melodrama set mostly in a small town where a girl who has turned eighteen lives with the woman who raised her, and begins on the day when the girl’s mother comes to town to retrieve her and take her to the city.  The film is notable for its focus on its female characters, although the two male characters in the film, a boarder who lives in the same house as the girl and hopes to marry her and a gigolo who has been living off of the mother, are given an appropriate share of attention.  Although it feels like a stageplay, Bergman energetically attempts to apply cinema to his script, shooting through windows, making use of tight close-ups and so on.  Nothing in the film is more indelible than the opening and closing shot, which shows a church—otherwise never mentioned in the film—looming largely over the otherwise sanguine town like a cat watching over its kittens.  Running 93 minutes, the bottom line is that the film is continually entertaining as one waits to see what choices the characters will make and what will happen to them, which is more than one can say for several of Bergman’s later, more lauded features. 

Inga Landgré, Stig Olin, Marianne Löfgren and Dagny Lind star.  The squared full screen black-and-white picture looks quite nice, an improvement over the more aged image on the DVD.  There are often white vertical lines on the top edge of the image, but since your eyes are anchored on the subtitles, they are rarely noticeable, and only once does a line descend all the way through the image, which is otherwise sharply focused and free of distortion.  The sound has quite a bit of background noise, but the dialog is reasonably strong and the music is adequately delivered.

Bergman’s filmmaking skills improve noticeably in the 1947
A Ship to India (Skepp till Indialand), his third feature.  His blocking and shot choices are more confident and never feel jarring or desperate as they sometimes do in Crisis.  Although it is actually based upon a stageplay, unlike Crisis, it does not feel like one.  Unfortunately, the play appears to have been godawful and, again unlike Crisis, the film is awful, as well.  A seaman played by Birger Malmsten returns home after being gone for a number of years and then there is a flashback for most of the 95-minute film that explains what happened before he left.  The character has a congenital birth defect, a mild hump on his back, and this prevented his father from loving him or treating him with any respect.  The father runs a salvage company and the action is set as the company attempts to raise a boat in the harbor, although they often talk as if it is in deeper water and perilously near collapse.  Now, conflicts between fathers and sons are the stuff of drama, but adding the humped back is the dramatic equivalent of wearing a belt and suspenders.  Not only does the story not need it, but it draws undue attention to the artifice of the conflict.  One could make the excuse that this was the script Bergman got stuck with, except that he would much later use a similar device on a far more (undeservedly) lauded feature—which is also included in set and will be addressed in due time.  In any case, some of the pieces of the film are nice enough—although the boy’s mother is aboard the ship, the father also brings aboard a mistress (another Bergman obsession), and the boy falls for her.  The individual scenes between the boy and the mistress are very nice, the scenes with the mother are effective and even the scenes between the boy and the father are good when the hump isn’t involved in the conversation, but where the characters in Crisis grow steadily and appreciably over the course of the film, the characters in Boat to India are just sort of adjusted to whatever scene is presenting them.  It is a well made movie of moments, but an utterly forgettable and dismissible film.

The full screen black-and-white picture looks terrific.  The image is free of wear from beginning to end, with sharp contrasts.  The dialog is a little raspy in places, but otherwise the sound is fine and Erland von Koch’s musical score teeters on a very haunting melody, although like a wave lapping the shore during a receding tide, it never quite gets there.

Platter 3 presents Bergman’s 1957 Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället).  We reviewed Criterion’s lovely freestanding Blu-ray in Feb 22 and that is the version included here, with a beautiful, spotless full screen black-and-white image transfer and clean, solid monophonic sound.  A road movie and, in essence, an allegory about life, Victor Sjöström stars as an elderly doctor driving with his pregnant daughter-in-law, played by Ingrid Thulin, to a college to receive an honor.  During the trip he also drifts off into dreams of his childhood, and along the way they pick up a trio of young hitchhikers, and meet two sets of married couples—one just getting started and the other on the outs.  You name it in the stages of life, and it is in the film, somewhere.  Unlike the first three movies in the set, there is no overt reference to suicide, but the cloud of death hangs heavily over everything and is clearly as prominent in the consciousness of Sjöström’s character as are his desperate memories of his youth.  Running 93 minutes, the road movie structure gives the film all the momentum it requires, while the penetrating portraits of the characters resonate compellingly.  It should be noted that the film is not without touches of humor, as well.  Björnstrand and Bibi Andersson co-star, and Max Von Sydow also has a brief put pertinent appearance.  There is a commentary by Cowie, a 4-minute Bergman introduction, a great 17-minute behind-the-scenes piece and a rewarding 91-minute interview with Bergman from 1998 reflecting upon his own life and the specters that accompany old age.

A younger but still elderly Sjöström stars in Bergman’s first masterpiece, the 1950 To Joy (Till glädje), which appears on platter 4 and was previously part of the Early Bergman DVD set.  Stig Eriksson and Maj-Britt Nilsson are violinists in an orchestra and Sjöström is the conductor, who becomes a sort of father figure to them as they fall in love, marry and have children.  From a plot perspective, the film is simply scenes from a marriage as it captures the couple at different times in their relationship, dissecting the uneasy balance between personal growth and marital collaboration, but underscoring the story is the profound nature of music itself, which delights the viewer at first as the various famous pieces the orchestra is practicing reflect the patterns of drama and farce that the characters inevitably fall into.  And that is where Sjöström comes in, because in addition to being a father-like or even god-like authority in the lives of the couple, he also embodies the inexplicable power that music achieves by combining its seemingly disparate components—just as film does on an even grander scale—and serves as a reminder that while music may seem ethereal and divine, it is a human endeavor.  Running 99 minutes, the film goes along just as Bergman’s earlier melodramas had, but instead of reaching a dramatic or artistic plateau at some point, every development in the story and every advancement in the film’s construction achieve a greater height and greater psychological and philosophical resonance.  If you are even just passingly familiar with classical music—and, because the work in question is so good, maybe even if you are not—the finale becomes the most profound and exciting moment of all, and not to mention, a herald declaring to cinema that Bergman had arrived.

The full screen black-and-white picture is gorgeous and much nicer than the DVD.  While it doesn’t have the precision displayed by Wild Strawberries—we spotted one scratch, and a few momentary, isolated compromises—overall it looks sharp and clear.  The monophonic sound is also strong enough to deliver the music effectively.

Sharing the platter rather appropriately, as To Joy closes with the performance of a symphony, the 1951 Summer Interlude (Sommarlek) opens with the performance of a ballet, captured with exceptional precision by Bergman’s fine eye for the arts.  This time, Nilsson plays a principal ballerina who gets the day off when there is an electrical failure during rehearsals and takes a short ferry trip to an island where she spent her summers as a teenager, specifically recalling her final summer there as the film then segues into a specific flashback of the indoctrinating romance she experienced that summer, an ‘en arrière,’ as it were.  Malmsten, who had a major supporting part in To Joy, as well, co-stars as the eager young man.  Running 96 minutes, the film is a lovely memory journey, accentuated by the atmosphere of a Swedish summer (where the birds start chirping in what would normally be the middle of the night).  While the narrative can feel despairing at times, the film draws upon the beauty of ballet to continually restore a faith in life and love.  The breadth of Nilsson’s performance is also impressive.

We reviewed Criterion’s freestanding Blu-ray release in Jul 12.  An opening title card on the film in the set says the transfer comes from a 2017 restoration, so it cannot be the same, but it looks very much like the older release.  The full screen black-and-white picture has more grain, speckles and feint vertical lines than the other features, although for the film’s age and source, it is still a decent presentation, with sharply focused edges and finely detailed contrasts.  Perhaps a line is a bit more pronounced on one version than it is on the other, but essentially, the two presentations are identical.  It is also worth noting that the film contains a sequence of animated doodles on a record sleeve.

Bergman’s first international hit, back in the days when Swedish films were synonymous with hubba-hubba, the 1953 Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), appears on platter 5 by itself.  Running 97 minutes, it actually has an ‘After School Special’ tone, and is about two teenagers whose summer fling leads into a dismal marriage.  While there is no link to an artform substructure as in To Joy and Summer Interlude, the working class backgrounds of the two kids, played by Harriet Andersson and Lars Ekborg, tie the film closely to the neorealist works appearing elsewhere in Europe at the time, while the clarity that the two actors bring to their characters gives the film an enduring relevance.  The all-too-real swing between the idyllic moments when the two first run away from their homes (they take out a decrepit pleasure boat the boy’s father owns), the erratic shifts between bliss, frustration and anger when their money runs out and the girl learns she is pregnant, and then the hard truths when they try to establish an adult life from these beginnings may not necessarily deliver the transcendent pleasure that Bergman manages to achieve elsewhere (for one thing, there is an unintentional tendency to sympathize when Ekborg’s character starts slapping Andersson around), but the consistency within its emotional range is both impressive and entertaining.

Again, Criterion released a previous Blu-ray that we reviewed in Jul 12, and this time, the improvements are clear.  While the earlier BD looked terrific, there are still occasional scratches, grain and other very slight flaws that have been almost entirely eliminated with the updated transfer.  The full screen black-and-white image is sharp, solid and spotless, which can help eliminate any subconscious resistance to the narrative downturns.  A marvelous 13-minute piece is included that goes over how the film wound up being an adults-only hit in the American sticks and a profile of promoter Kroger Babb, who was behind its dissemination.  Also featured is a trailer, a 4-minute Bergman introduction, a 25-minute interview with Andersson from 2012 conducted by Cowie, and 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes material that feature a few voiceover interviews with individuals depicted in the footage.

With a two-pronged narrative, the 1955 Dreams (Kvinnodröm) on platter 6 runs just 88 minutes.  A fashion photographer played by Dahlbeck uses the excuse of a location shoot to reconnect with a former lover while at the same time, one of the models, played by Harriet Andersson, spends the day with a wealthy older man played by Björnstrand, who has picked her up and treats her with a gown, a necklace, amusement park rides and pastries.  Although they intersect, they are in effect two separate stories, presenting a half-dozen interesting characters (each bonding is upset by the entrance of another woman—there is also a terrific extra during some of the photo shoots, an enormous man, and you can’t take your eyes off of him).  The film is about the spoils and spoilt of the upper middle class and breaks no new ground, but it is nicely shot and the performances sustain one’s interest—after all, if you start to become impatient with one couple, the film soon enough switches to the other.

The full screen black-and-white picture is in very nice shape with minimal wear and sharp contrasts. 

The second feature on the platter is a gem that, like Dreams, Criterion has never released before, the 1954 A Lesson of Love (En lektion i kärlek).  Laugh aloud funny, it is a romantic comedy about a gynecologist, played by Björnstrand, who schemes to get his wife back.  Dahlbeck and Harriet Andersson co-star, but to go into more identification of their characters would spoil things.  Running 96 minutes, the narrative is loaded with flashbacks and has a marvelous surprise somewhat before the halfway mark.  The important thing is that while one might think at first that it is going to be anchored to a male-centric view of relationships, gynecology and love, that is most definitely not the case by time the movie is over.  It is a delightful, free-spirited film made all the more enjoyable by its more traditional Bergmanesque surroundings. 

The full screen black-and-white picture again looks spotless, with bright, crisp contrasts.  The film is accompanied by a 4-minute Bergman introduction in which he tells the viewer he doubted he was as capable at comedy as he turned out to be.

The second ‘week’ of the festival begins not with a theatrical movie, but a six-episode television miniseries from 1973 that was subsequently abridged to become one of Bergman’s biggest international hits, Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap).  The miniseries is presented first, on platter 7, and then the paired-down version is presented on platter 8, along with a surprising companion film.  Criterion previously released the two versions of Scenes from a Marriage on a two-platter Blu-ray set (UPC#715515220118, $50).

The miniseries runs 300 minutes, although many of its individual scenes are so lengthy—one of the episodes consists of just a single scene—that a typical 90-minute Bergman movie has more scenes as a whole.  In our review of Saint Omer (Apr 24), we pointed out that the presence of subtitles can change the entire impact of a film by drawing the viewer’s eyes away from the image, particularly where a film has a static camera and is top heavy with dialog.  While both of those conditions apply to Scenes from a Marriage, which was shot by Sven Nykvist, the subtitles do not create any sort of interference.  This is probably because Bergman chose to use so many intense close ups, although even in the medium shots, the subtitles are not distracting.  The designs that Bergman and Nykvist have chosen are technically astute, but unlike Saint Omer, there is no additional artistic impact from some of those choices.  Although quite different from the artistic dynamism inherent in most of Bergman’s films (once in a while there will be a camera movement or edit that accentuates the film’s emotional content), the camera is simply there, recording the actors from the best possible angles to capture their emotional swings, and little else.

The series is about a married couple who get divorced but just can’t quit each other.  For the sake of dramatic license, they will go through a rollercoaster of emotions within a single sequence that normal couples would likely go through over the course of several weeks—loving each other, feeling uneasy, hating each other, claiming never to have loved one another and then loving each other again, and kissing or having sex between each shift.  Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson both give thorough and impressive performances (with the crown going to Ullmann for communicating her inner being so thoroughly, even when it is in conflict with her dialog), and despite the static camera and very low budget sets (Ullmann’s character is supposedly a lawyer, but she has the neatest, barest lawyer’s office you’ve ever seen), the show remains engrossing all the way through.  The flaws of the characters are immediately apparent, but like imperfect friends that you tend to forgive as you get to know them better, each develops a sympathy that allows you not only to tolerate their company for the film’s 5 hours, but to invest in their fates.  The first episode has a great deal of dry humor, and while the subsequent episodes are not as comedic, it establishes a tone that encourages the viewer to relax and accept what happens.  To a certain extent, the show does feel like Bergman trying to justify the revolving door his own love life was experiencing, but for sheer stagecraft and emotional exploration, it is a very impressive and rewarding experience.

The image transfer is substantially improved over the earlier BD, where the series also appears in its entirety on the first platter.  Shot in 16mm, the program is presented in a squared full screen format, and can be heavily grainy at times, so much so that if you have a choice, it is probably better to watch the show on a small screen rather than a large one.  Other scenes are slightly grainy, not grainy at all, or not quite as grainy as the most heavily grainy scenes—and no, the grain does not mirror the deterioration or subsequent renewal of the relationship.  Colors are fresh and fleshtones are accurate throughout and in the clearest moments, you’ll swear you can make out the camera crew reflected in Ullmann’s lovely blue eyes.  Jumping over to the older BD, however, even during a scene that is very, very grainy on the upgraded BD, that scene is very, very, very, very grainy on the older BD, and suddenly the newer one doesn’t look so bad at all.  The colors on the older version also feel over saturated at times, and there are scenes that look heavily grainy on the older BD and not grainy at all on the newer one.

At the beginning of each episode after the first episode, a still photo montage is presented with moments from the previous episode while the narrator (presumably Bergman himself) explains what has happened previously.  The abridged theatrical release of the film offers little more than this, except for the chance to actually savor the performances.  Why the 1974 theatrical release is placed so close to the longer version is perplexing, but it is consistent with the format of the box set, since another one of Bergman’s longer and abridged features is also presented in that manner near the end of the collection.  The problem, or maybe the purpose, of ordering the programs this way is that as you watch the 170-minute theatrical version, you fill in the ellipses with your still fresh memories of the extended version.  The shorter version has less humor, favors Ullmann’s performance even more, and makes Josephson’s character seem like less of a jerk, although some of his actions are still horrendous.  As an ‘Ingmar Bergman movie,’ approached without the knowledge or experience of the longer program, the film (which is divided into chapters with title cards that reflect the six episodes in the series) can seem a bit overbearing and unrelenting, a psychological study of two characters who seem unusually forgiving of one another, all things considered, but the enormity of its boxoffice success attests to the chords it apparently struck with those who found familiarity in its dramatic conflicts and situations.  There are only a handful of supporting characters, but one of the most effective is Bibi Andersson, who appears in the first episode of the miniseries and also in the first chapter of the feature film.  The picture and sound transfers are identical to the longer versions in both sets.  Also featured are three supplements that originally appeared on Criterion’s DVD release (Jun 04), a 15-minute interview with Bergman from 1985, 25 minutes of interviews with Ullmann and Josephson, and a 15-minute breakdown of how the film was altered from the series, presented by Cowie.  The feature film and those same special features appear on the second platter of the separate BD release.

Accompanying the feature film in the Cinema set, as well, is an exciting treat, the 2003 sequel that Bergman concocted (it was to be his final film), which Criterion has licensed from Sony Pictures Classics, Saraband.  Both Ullmann and Josephson appear in the telefilm, which was actually expanded with additional material for its American theatrical release.  Börje Ahlstedt co-stars as the son of Josephson’s character from a previous relationship—who is actually just a handful of years younger than Ullmann’s character (the logic of the character ages does not entirely coincide with the backstories discussed in Scenes from a Marriage, as that program never implies the two principals have a multiple-decade age difference)—and Julia Dufvenius gives a lovely performance as the son’s daughter and therefore the granddaughter of Josephson’s character.  At first, since she speaks directly to the camera, you suspect that Ullmann’s character might be a ghost, but the film ultimately does not play out that way.  One of the sly touches of humor in the final episode of Scenes from a Marriage is that Josephson’s character is driving an old heap of a car while Ullmann’s character has a nice new one, implying that their fortunes have gone in different directions after their parting.  Bergman invents a deus ex machina to make Josephson’s character rich in Saraband, however, since the plot revolves around the need for Ahlstedt and Dufvenius’s characters to be beholden to him (if you didn’t like Josephson’s character before, you will despise him all the more here).  Ullmann and Josephson react to one another more as old colleagues who have been out of contact rather than as ex-spouses, but it is still an enormous joy to watch them nestle themselves back into their parts and pitch lines back and forth again.  Indeed, a true advantage to having had the abridged version of Scenes from a Marriage follow the longer version is that by the end of the second screening, as it were, you are fully immersed in the characters yourself and very open to what happens next.  Running 111 minutes, the film contains vague allusions to other Bergman works, as well, and embraces several of his obsessions and themes that were touched upon in his earliest films, including a vocation as a classical musician, an empty church and suicide.  Ullmann’s character is just a catalyst, since the drama really plays out among the other three characters, but it is a richly staged and executed film, made all the more engrossing by its positional placement in the Cinema collection.

Nothing like Scenes from a Marriage when it comes to presentation, the picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and the color transfer is flawless, with vivid detail, lovely fleshtones and precise hues.  Even better is the DTS stereo sound, which has smooth tones, a wonderful dimensionality and subtle separations.

Sex has always existed, of course, or none of us would be here, and it has always crept about the edges of literature in a manner reflective of the sociological climate of a given place and times.  In other words, the past has seen bawdy eras and prudish eras, and for a large part, those general attitudes were reflected in the stories and art of their times.  In the Eighteenth and especially the Nineteenth Centuries, the transition from prude to bawd was occurring in fits and starts, but then in the Twentieth Century the shift solidified, with motion pictures following (by shear coincidence, we assure you) pretty much along Bergman’s career, from the Forties to the Eighties.  In 1980, Bergman made a German telefilm, From the Life of the Marionettes (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten), which has been placed at the beginning of platter 9 and is probably his most graphically sexual work (why couldn’t we have German TV when we were little?).  It also works quite effectively, however, as a respite from his other introspective psychological dramas, by placing that format into a murder investigation.

Robert Atzorn stars as a successful businessman married to an equally successful fashion designer played by Christine Buchegger.  At the film’s opening, in color, he murders a prostitute and then, in black and white, the film jumps forwards and backwards in time to show investigators interviewing those who know him and to show how his life began to spiral out of control.  The film is in German, and this is an example of where subtitles can really interfere with a film’s impact, because the visual dynamic is captivating.  Not only is there rampant nudity, there is the world of designers, whose environments are a natural outcropping of their creativity, and there is a lengthy, striking, narrated dream sequence (definitely worth watching a second time through with the subtitles suppressed), along with very cryptic expressions on the cast members as their characters suppress their true feelings in misleading conversations.  Running 103 minutes, on the one hand, it is a typical late Bergman generic work in that it is primarily about characters analyzing their feelings and motivations, but on the other hand, it is embracing the stylishness of the Seventies European exploitation crime thriller genre (the film does have one supremely creepy moment as Atzorn’s character listens in on a conversation between Buchegger’s character and her lover) and overlaying just enough of it onto the other genre so that the entire film feels fresh and stimulating.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1.  The image looks fantastic.  The color sequences (there is another at the end) are bright and precisely detailed, while the black-and-white images are slick and crisp.  The monophonic sound is also strong and clean.  The film, incidentally, does not just analyze the killer’s breakdown.  Every major character gets put through the wringer, including a gay character.  While his portrayal will seem a bit archaic today, it is intended as a portrait not just of what life was like in the early Eighties for a German gay man, but the character’s own attitude about that life, so that the depth of the introspection supersedes the clichés.

The film is perfectly paired with the second film on the platter, the 1968 Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen), which is also something of a thriller that may or may not involve a murder.  While one might think that the more highly regarded and complex Wolf should come first, Marionettes gives the viewer an appropriate break from Ullmann before Wolf brings her back, and while Marionettes is about the internalization of madness, Wolf is about its more cinematic and eclectic externalization.  Ullmann is the wife of a painter played by Von Sydow, the two spending their final summer on a remote island.  How much of what happens there is real and how much is unreal can be left for argument, although the ultimate assumption is that very little of what occurs in the film, outside of the few domestic scenes in and around the summer cabin, is not fantasy.  Thulin co-stars with Josephson, Gertrud Fridh and others.  Nykvist’s squared full screen black-and-white cinematography is outstanding—and looks spotless with the incredible, thrilling transfer—and the dialog is sparse enough that the subtitles rarely interfere with its stunning designs.  Running 88 minutes, the film is one of Bergman’s more entertaining if abstract features, and its surprises are best left to be discovered, although quite a bit involves Felliniseque dinner parties with aristocrats in an old castle.  We reviewed an MGM DVD in Jun 04, which had a really nice image transfer, although it looks less solid and even a bit messy compared to the gorgeous BD. 

The two films on platter 9 may have downbeat subjects, but their infusion of Bergman’s exceptional style and refined wit turn them into upbeat cinematic experiences.  The same cannot be said for the two films paired on platter 10.  They are downers with little redeeming value.  There always seems to be a war going on somewhere, even in Europe, so at first glance, the 1968 Shame (Skammen) seems promising.  Not only are Von Sydow and Ullmann paired once again as the stars (with Sigge Fürst and Björnstrand), but Ullmann’s character actually has some spunk in her and is not the mousy housewife she played in the other features.  The two portray former symphony musicians who are working a small farm while a war that is disrupting everyone’s lives is taking place in the distance.  Like civilization around them, their relationship deteriorates, and when the war arrives at their doorstep everything falls apart.  The parallels, psychological and spiritual, are obvious.  While the 104-minute film, which actually plays more like a post-apocalypse story than a war story, is promising at first, it drearily scratches its way to a symbolic finish in a drifting boat on a purgatorial sea.  The film has ideas and attempts at innovation, but no wit.

The squared full screen black-and-white picture is in fine condition, with sharp contrasts and no wear, but Nykvist’s cinematography is obligated to convey the bleakness of the couple’s situation, so it rarely has the pizzazz that made the two films on the previous platter so much fun.  The monophonic sound is strong and clear, and the sound mix is fairly elaborate for a Bergman production, with lots of war noises.  Criterion also released a freestanding Blu-ray with the same transfer (UPC#715515226219, $40).  Both presentations are accompanied by a 5-minute press gathering to promote the start of the shoot, an extended 15-minute interview with Bergman about the film (since Vietnam was the guerre de jour, he relates Shame to that, although obviously, since then, the situations he depicts, which were inspired by the horrors of World War II, have returned to Europe more than once, giving the film at least a whiff of prescience) and the role of artists, a 4-minute interview with Ullmann that originally appeared on the MGM DVD (Jun 04) and a terrific 72-minute interview with Bergman (and Ullmann & Von Sydow) on the set, from a Public Broadcasting station profiling Bergman in 1968, with lots of clips from his films (“They’re not easy movies.  Like Strindberg’s plays, they often tell disagreeable stories and sometimes, like Gothic fairytales, they’re absolutely crippling.  But they’re always profoundly moving.”) and lengthy conversations in English, with Bergman talking about the films and speaking extensively about dreams and the other subconscious inspirations for creativity.

At least the 1969 The Passion of Anna (En passion), which also stars Von Sydow and Ullmann, with Bibi Andersson, has some touches of humor.  It is in color and runs 101 minutes, and its primary flaw is its emotional incoherence.  The film feels like it has been trimmed down from something lengthier, and as a result the narrative jumps from one situation to the next without adequate explanation or logical progression.  In the beginning, Von Sydow’s character is living by himself on an island in a small house that he has difficulty maintaining (there is actual slapstick in some of his repair skills).  He meets Ullmann’s character when she stops to use the phone, and learns that she is visiting Andersson’s character, who lives somewhat nearby.  Von Sydow’s character then has a fling with Andersson’s character, but once that starts to get interesting, the film just leaps ahead to where he is living with Ullmann’s character.  Meanwhile, somebody is gruesomely murdering animals on the island.  Then the film jumps ahead again and Von Sydow and Ullmann’s characters are married, and there is friction between them (Ullmann’s character has a cane-assisted limp at the film’s beginning, but that unaccountably disappears as the film proceeds).  Their friend is accused of murdering the animals and commits suicide, although he didn’t do it.  We never find out who did it.  The film ends with an argument between the married couple, with many tin cans of ambiguity still tied figuratively to the back of their automobile.  Bergman also experiments in meta by inserting a moment with each of the three stars where each talks about his or her character.  The experiment is a hoity-toity failure, as such interviews are best left for press promotions (aka EPKs), but if anyone had to try it, it might as well have been Bergman.  The film is certainly watchable—as is Shame—but instills frustration rather than excitement with Bergman’s artistry. 

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1.  Colors are bright and while the cinematography is deliberately grainy at times, the image is sharp when it is intended to be.  Again, you find yourself looking for the camera crew in Ullmann’s eyes.

Sensing that it is time for a break, platter 11 contains two of the documentaries that Bergman made about the island in the Baltic Sea where he set up shop and filmed so many of his features.  His residency there was covered quite thoroughly in two films made by others, the 2006 documentary, Bergman Island (Jul 09), and the 2021 fictional drama, also titled Bergman Island (Feb 23), but those films will just make one all the more excited to visit the place from Bergman’s perspective.  The first documentary, Fårö Document (Fårödokument) from 1970, runs 58 minutes and is a masterful portrait of the island, Fårö, and the larger island that mothers it, Gotland.  Bergman includes interviews with a farmer, a postmaster, a fisherman, a librarian, a centenarian, teenagers and so on, also looking at the island’s society, economic vitality, topography and climate.  He examines abandoned farms (which look very much like the farmhouses in Shame and Passion of Anna), the island’s myths and history, and its different seasonal conditions.  Squeamish viewers should be aware that he includes pieces on the slaughtering of animals, but he often does so in a montage of close-ups, so that while you do see the gory details, the overall impact is less disconcerting for those not familiar with such matters.  There is also a fascinating montage of sheep giving birth, which they appear to do rather nonchalantly at times.  Bergman concludes the program with a moral, chastising Sweden’s ‘socialist’ government for not extending its protective arms far enough to care for the island’s citizens.

The squared full screen picture, shot by Nykvist, has both black-and-white and color passages, and the transfers of both are excellent.  The image is sharp, colors are fresh, contrasts are finely detailed and grain, while present from time to time, is held to a minimum.

The companion film, Fårö Document 1979 (Fårödokument 1979), looks at the island a decade later (he apparently intended to start doing a Michael Apted thing, as he promises to follow up again in 1989, although it never happened).  Even more so than the first film, however, the 104-minute feature is excellent filmmaking.  Bergman organizes stories and stories within stories to keep the viewer fully absorbed in the ebb and flow of the peripatetic documentary.  Even within a sequence, he knows how to follow the substories to keep a viewer intrigued.  Watching a log balance on the back of a truck has never been so gripping.  He includes footage from the earlier film, putting that footage into black and white even when it was in color the first time out (otherwise, the entire film is in color this time).  Once again, he explores the island (there is an interview with a lighthouse keeper), catching it at different moments during the seasons (there is a harrowing ride on a ferry during a windstorm, and another during a snowstorm), looking at different economic endeavors, interviewing people from a wide variety of ages about living on the island and what they expect from it, and including many engaging activities such as a community roof thatching (since thatching does not cause condensation, hay kept in thatched barns does not become moldy), an elderly man cutting down a tree in the forest by himself, hauling the pieces of it back to his home and then sawing it into genuine lumber, and spending a day on a commercial fishing boat.  There is also another butchering sequence, but again, it is less gory than it is interesting.  He offers another summary at the end, suggesting that tourism on the island is beginning to pick up and aid its economic recovery, but what he doesn’t mention is that he became a key part of that promotion, which is perhaps why he chose to discontinue the series.

Again the colors are fresh and the image is usually sharp.  Featured in a supplement with the film are two more, brief Bergman documentaries.  The first, Daniel, from 1967, is an utter joy.  Part of an anthology film entitled Stimulantia, Bergman’s contribution was to take the home movies that he made of his son between birth and his second birthday and compile them into a lovely 11-minute reel accompanied by some lighthearted Wolfgang Mozart piano music.  Beaming like a proud dad, Bergman introduces the montage with a wonderful can’t-wait-to-see-what-he-thinks-when-the-kid-becomes-a-teenager enthusiasm, and what follow is, sure, amateur filmmaking, but shot, gathered and paced by a supreme professional of his craft, and absolutely guaranteed to elicit a smile from every viewer.  Bergman compiled photographs of his mother for the 1984 Karin’s Face (Karins ansikte) from family albums, scrapbooks and snapshots.  Running 15 minutes and set to another very sweet piano score, this time by Käbi Laretei, the montage stretches from late Nineteenth Century photos of her and her parents up to a passport photo taken shortly before she passed away in the Sixties.  You can readily see reflections of Wild Strawberries and a few of the films that come later in the set, particularly in the pictures that include Bergman’s pastor father, but more importantly, what you see in his mother’s face is Ullmann.  He used Bibi Andersson, Thulin and others to play distinctive characters, but his use of Ullmann was something entirely different, an almost desperate attempt at personal retrieval that is then transcribed by his skills into great art.

Each of the next three movies appears on a separate platter by itself, but those three films, Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel) on platter 12, Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna) on platter 13 and The Silence (Tystnaden) on platter 14, are considered a trilogy by Bergman himself and by Bergman scholars, although for the life of us, we do not see the connections between them.  Bergman claims it has something to do with God, but we just don’t get it.  They are three completely different, squared full screen black-and-white films.  Nevertheless, Criterion released the three movies together on DVD (Jun 04) and they also released the movies as a three-platter Blu-ray set, A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman—Through a Glass Darkly · Winter Light · The Silence (UPC#715515230612, $100).

Although the 1962 Foreign Film Oscar winner, Through a Glass Darkly, has just four characters, it starts out very much like an Anton Chekhov or Eugene O’Neill play.  Harriet Andersson, Von Sydow, Björnstrand, and Lars Passgärd star.  Björnstrand plays a successful but artistically shortcoming author, Andersson is his daughter, Passgärd is his teenaged son and Von Sydow is Andersson’s husband, a doctor.  They are staying at a summer home on the water and having an evening meal, followed by an entertainment three of them put on for Björnstrand’s character.  Andersson’s character is named ‘Karin,’ and of course that will immediately send off alarm bells for anyone who just got finished watching Karin’s Face.  It turns out she is having bouts of madness, and the remainder of the 90-minute film presents conversations and actions that lead to an interlude of incest and a major emotional breakdown.  The film ends with a discussion between Björnstrand and Von Sydow’s character about ‘God,’ whom Andersson’s character claims to have seen during her breakdown (appearing as a spider).  They surmise that God may or may not be the equivalent of love.  It is the first part of the film, however, that is the most engaging.  Bergman’s evocation of a summer evening and an outdoor meal is transporting, so much so that one easily retains that portion of the film in one’s memories and forgets everything else.  As for the remainder of the drama, it has momentum and intrigue, and because the cast is attractive you don’t mind the company of the characters, so if it has to have some purpose for its existence, Bergman’s choices are as good as any.

The picture is absolutely spotless.  The crispness of the image adds to the metaphorical purpose of every rotting board or wall or object in the film by beautifully magnifying the details of its decay.  There is an alternate English language track that is fully serviceable, but lacks the exotic atmosphere that the original Swedish so readily conveys and, of course, does not feature the original voices of the cast members which, by this point in the Cinema collection, one is quite familiar with.  The Film Trilogy presentation and the Cinema presentation are identical, and both are an improvement over the softer and slightly compromised DVD, which still looked quite good.  Both have the same audio options, as well as the US theatrical trailer, a 2-minute introduction by Bergman, an 11-minute assessment of the film by Cowie and a 9-minute interview with Andersson that appeared on the DVD.  The Film Trilogy platter also has a 15-minute interview with Nykvist from 1981 about working with Bergman and how they approached specific films (accompanied by behind-the-scenes footage), and a 15-minute audio-only interview with Björnstrand about Bergman’s direction and how he has embodied Bergman’s characters.

One of our favorite Bergman films, Winter Light is fairly simple, but that is what makes it so compelling.  Björnstrand is the widowed pastor in a small church coping with the few events that occur on a single winter’s Sunday after his sparsely attended service.  Von Sydow is a parishioner who needs counseling and Thulin is a local teacher who somewhat masochistically continues to pine for Björnstrand’s character even though he spurns her advances.  That the psychological and spiritual crisis skills of Björnstrand’s character leave something to be desired is pretty much the point of the 82-minute feature, although there are even more discussions about the existence of God, the nature of God, the meaning of Christ’s life, the nature of love and the purpose of existence.  What we admire so greatly about the film is that without being showy or indulgent, Bergman’s visual approach is exquisite.  There is one very long take where Björnstrand’s character is reading a letter from Thulin and the film cuts to Thulin’s character reciting the letter for the camera, but that is the movie’s only radical moment, as it were, and the letter, describing the emotional gap that exists between the two characters, is arguably the heart of the film.  Otherwise, it is a cold, snowy, empty day and Bergman shifts masterfully between the outdoor environment, the indoor compromises to that environment and the people trying to navigate that world.  Dramatic things happen in the film, yes, but unlike many of Bergman’s other movies, the drama is soft spoken and underplayed, gaining a greater strength from its reserve and silences.

Again, the picture, which is identical to the picture on the Film Trilogy release, looks sharp and flawless, adding greatly to the closeness one feels to the characters, and sending chills down the arms when the images move outdoors.  The sound is strong, and there is an alternate English language track for those inclined.  Again, the DVD looked quite good, as well, but cannot match the perfection of the BDs.  Both platters come with another 4-minute intro by Bergman, another 10-minute overview by Cowie, a trailer, and an outstanding 147-minute five-part production documentary, made for television, that documented every step of the film’s creation and release, all of which appeared on the DVD.

Thulin is a translator traveling with her sister, played by Gunnel Lindblom, and the sister’s pre-adolescent son in The Silence.  Thulin’s character is ill and so they check into a hotel and stay there for several days as Thulin’s character gets sicker and Lindblom’s character gets fidgety, wanting to return home.  That is all there really is to the very opaque narrative.  There is a lot of sexual tension between the two sisters and Lindblom’s character eventually goes out to pick up a man or two, which assuredly helped to sell tickets on the film’s first release in 1963.  The film looks gorgeous and gets by at least a little bit on that and its cryptic manner, but it has nothing obvious to do with a deity and seems more than anything else like Bergman is just throwing something together and hoping there is enough oddball stuff going on to seem like art and not like 96 minutes of nonsense.

There is one very thin and fleeting vertical line that appears for a couple of moments past the hour mark, but otherwise the image is spotless and contrasts are vivid.  As behooves its title, there is very little dialog, so it really doesn’t matter if you go with the Swedish version or the English language version, or better yet, just turn off the sound and admire the images.  Again there is no difference between the Cinema version and the Film Trilogy version, and both have the same supplements that originally appeared on the DVD, a 4-minute introduction by Bergman, an 11-minute piece by Cowie, a brief but nice collection of memorabilia in still frame and an American trailer.

Appearing by itself on platter 15 is Bergman’s 1961 Foreign Film Oscar winner, The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan—in a rare instance, the beautiful English language title has a resonate secondary meaning that the original title, referring specifically to a source of water and not the season, does not).  The narrative is of secondary importance to the film’s setting and literary heritage.  Taking place in the Fourteenth Century and based upon tale told in those times, it is about the daughter of a prominent farmer who is raped and killed one afternoon on her way through the woods to church.  The rapists then rather unintuitively stop at the farm that night seeking shelter.  Von Sydow plays the farmer in what is one of his very best performances amid all of the terrific performances he delivered for Bergman, and it is from the strength of his remarkable presence that the viewer is drawn into the simplicities of the drama and its unfolding.  At the same time, the film meticulously recreates Swedish life in the era and is as fascinating for its details on how tools are used and how people conduct themselves as it is for the unfolding of its plot.  And because Bergman has made the film, the lessons of comportment and the nature of spirituality that are demonstrated in the story are automatically given a modern context and relevance.

We did not care for the film as much when we first reviewed Criterion’s DVD in Feb 06.  The transfer looked fine, but the black-and-white squared full screen image is not nearly as crisp and smooth as the gorgeous Blu-ray.  Additionally, if you are aware of the story’s limitations ahead of time, you are more accepting of how the 91-minute feature plays out.  Criterion previously released a freestanding Blu-ray, as well (UPC#715515217811, $40), which appears to be identical to the Cinema BD.  As with the DVD, both have an alternate English language track that is serviceable but still undesirable, an informative commentary track from Bergman scholar Birgitta Steene, a great 40-minute AFI talk by Bergman in English, 21 minutes of interviews with co-stars Lindblom and Birgitta Pettersson, and a 7-minute testimonial by Ang Lee.

Viewers will be excused if they choose to watch a double bill of Virgin Spring and the next film in the collection, Bergman’s other medieval tale, The Seventh Seal, even though it appears by itself on platter 16 as the beginning of the next array of films as Centerpiece 2.  We, ourselves, were torn because subsequent to releasing Bergman’s Cinema, Criterion issued an outstanding 4K Blu-ray presentation (May 23) and as eager as we are to review the boxed set as it is presented, we are loathe to go backwards and try to watch the film with an inferior transfer after having been profoundly moved by the 4K upgrade.  Nevertheless, we soldiered ahead and were happy to discover that while the BD is not as sharp as the 4K presentation, it does have the same transfer, a substantial improvement over the standard BD that had been included with the 4K platter and was originally released by itself (Jul 09).  While there are a few hairs on the edges of the frame and a couple of other momentary flaws, overall the squared full screen black-and-white picture looks fantastic, and an enthusiasm for the image and the crisp monophonic sound readily feeds into an enthusiasm for the film itself.

Where Virgin Spring combines a historical exploration of life in the Dark Ages with a revenge drama, Seventh Seal combines that same examination of medieval life with metaphysics, while stirring in an appealing amount of humor, as well.  With the 4K release having affected us like an arrow from Cupid’s bow, we now love the film immensely and found the Cinema presentation to be highly enjoyable, even though the platter is flawed and does not start up where it left off when playback is terminated like the films on the other platters do.  Exposure to what we had seen of the Cinema collection up to that point had us appreciating Björnstrand’s presence in the film—as the squire to the knight played by Von Sydow—a great deal more, so that his scenes rival those of the itinerant juggler played by Nils Poppe, while Von Sydow, who was at the heart of Virgin Spring, feels more and more like a figurehead instead of a hero.  Nevertheless, it is the wonderful way in which Bergman weaves all of the characters around one another in his tapestry, so that he can question Man’s existence at one moment, and engage in ribald insults the next, that makes the 97-minute movie so captivating.  Turn on the alternate English audio track and show the film to a child.  It will leave an indelible impression.

The special features that appeared on the BD release have been carried over, including Cowie’s commentary, a trailer, Woody Allen’s 7-minute fan spiel, a 10-minute summary of the film’s artistic impact by Cowie, a 36-minute overview of Bergman’s entire career presented again by Cowie as Bergman 101, a 20-minute audio-only interview with Von Sydow, a 3-minute talk with Bergman and the 83-minute overview of Bergman’s career we cited while introducing Faroe Dokument, Marie Nyreröd’s Bergman Island.

The metaphysics continue on platter 17 with Bergman’s delightful 1961 comedy, The Devil’s Eye (Djävulens öga).  By this time in the set, one is apt to be transfixed by Björnstrand’s every appearance, and here he plays the ‘Stage Manager’ narrator, thus commanding one’s attention and setting the mood with just his raised eyebrows, for what feels like a stageplay confection adapted quite masterfully to the screen.  Furthering the connections from Seventh Seal, Poppe is the film’s hero, a pastor whose virginal daughter, played by Bibi Andersson, is about to be married.  Fridh plays his wife.  In Hell, the Devil, played by Stig Järrel, upset because the daughter has yet to be deflowered before her wedding, and sends up Don Juan, played by Jarl Kulle, on a brief furlough from his tortures, accompanied by his servant, played by Sture Lagerwall, to seduce the daughter ahead of her nuptials.  Thus the pair attempt to corrupt the family every way they can, but to no avail.  While the scenes with the Devil are in costumes from the Seventeenth Century or thereabouts, the pastor lives in the modern world, so that Kulle and Lagerwall’s costumes change to modern dress when they arrive.  Running 87 minutes, the film still calls back to the delights of Smiles of a Summer Night as its explores the truths and presumptions regarding love and life, while also weighing in with a deceptively slight touch on the greater meanings of faith and betrayal.

We are ashamed to say that we reviewed a bootleg version of the film, which actually opened with Criterion’s Janus Films logo, on DVD in Jun 13.  The squared full screen black-and-white picture had looked really nice on the DVD—after all, the pirates were stealing from the best—but the Blu-ray is better still, with a vivid, spotless image that enhances the impact of every scene.

The second film on the platter is an outright burlesque, Bergman’s contribution to Europe’s obsession with Jerry Lewis, the 1964 All These Women (För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor).  Jarl Kulle plays a music critic in the Twenties intent upon writing a biography of a famous cellist.  The film opens on the cellist’s funeral, where each of his seven mistresses bid their farewell, and then flashes back to several days previously, when the critic first arrives at the cellist’s mansion.  Bibi and Harriet Andersson (no relation to one another, incidentally) are top billed, with Dahlbeck, Fridh, Barbro Hiort af Ornäs, Mona Malm and Karin Kavli as the other mistresses, all of whom are in attendance at the mansion.  While the film shifts between soundstage sets and actual locations, it never loses its atmosphere of artificiality and abstraction.  You never actually see the face of the cellist up close, so that he could be interpreted as an unseen deity for those wishing to give the farce a metaphysical undercurrent.  It has a surprising (for Bergman, at least) amount of slapstick—Malm even gets a pastry in the face—with climactic fireworks business that seems inspired by the finale of Blake Edwards’ 1963 The Pink Panther.  Throughout it all, Bergman’s staging is precise and masterful, despite the clownish performances. 

Running a brief 80 minutes, the film’s silliness can still feel drawn out at times as the viewer waits to find out how the cellist actually dies.  The squared full screen image is in gorgeously preserved and spotless color, and when Bergman just settles for a close-up of one or another of the actresses, the film has one’s complete attention.  Kulle’s constantly fumbling antics, however, can feel like more of a strain.  The monophonic sound is clear, and while there is quite a bit of nice cello music, there are also way too many intrusions of Yes! We Have No Bananas as it supposedly plays on the gramophone and seeps into other unrelated moments.  In effect, the movie is almost unwatchable the first time through, and utterly addicting thereafter.

Continuing the theme of theatricality that runs through this entire segment of the series, the first film on platter 18 is Bergman’s 1953 Sawdust and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton), about another traveling group of performers, this time in the Nineteenth Century.  Anders Ek is the Oliver Hardy-like manager of a small nomadic circus troupe and Åke Grönberg is a Stan Laurel-like clown whose character is deeply humiliated in the film’s opening sequence when his wife, played by Annika Tretow, goes skinny dipping with a group of military men.  After that prolog-like beginning, the film shifts to the primary narrative in which the circus enters a small town where the ex-wife of Ek’s character resides and he proceeds to undergo a more elaborate series of humiliations in attempting to put on a performance.  Harriet Andersson, Hasse Ekman and Gudrun Brost are also featured, and Björnstrand has a small but effective part as the leader of a theatrical troupe, self-admittedly no more than a single step up at the bottom of society’s ladder compared to the circus people (less lice in the costumes, apparently).  Fortunately, the 93-minute film is also quite meticulous in exploring the details of the characters’ lifestyles and the dynamics of their romantic lives, with Nyquist’s expertly staged squared full screen black-and-white cinematography bringing a sense of respect and importance to the vitality of every moment.  To this end, the lovely, spotless transfer (there is a slight grain in some sequences if you look really closely, but you won’t notice it if you become involved in the narrative; also the flashback in the opening sequence has a deliberately washed out look that is also effective and intended to be differentiated from the rest of the story), which enhances a viewer’s involvement with the narrative and transportation to the setting, even though this is the last circus you would ever want to run away to join.

Criterion also released the film as a standalone Blu-ray with the same transfer (UPC#715515224215, $40), and both presentations come with a 3-minute reflection on the film by Bergman and a good commentary track by Cowie.  We also reviewed Criterion’s DVD in Jul 09, which had those same special features.  The image looked very good, although it is not quite as sharp as the BD versions.  Perhaps because of the quality of the BD transfer, or perhaps because we are mellowing with our inundation of Bergman cinema, but we did not feel as antagonistic toward the film this time through, as its mix of story choices combined with its dynamic visual execution is not just impressive but is even exciting.  The film was marketed to the overcoat crowd in America as The Naked Night.

The second film on platter 18 is an ideal example of why the collection is so worthwhile as a whole.  Bergman’s 1969 The Rite (Riten) is the sort of film, like From the Life of the Marionettes, that only someone with unlimited resources could justify purchasing individually or, for that matter, justify purchasing a ticket to see in a theater.  As a serendipitous inclusion in set devoted to the director’s career, however, it is a wonderful and very entertaining discovery.  The squared full screen black-and-white film was made inexpensively, like Scenes from a Marriage, where there are mostly close-ups or very tight two-shots, and minimal furniture in a minimal number of sets.  Running just 75 minutes, the film, set in the present day, consists of nine individual scenes, each introduced with a title card, and is about three performers, played by Björnstrand, Ekman and Thulin, being interrogated by a law enforcement official played by Erik Hell.  The three performers have an amazingly successful act, and one of the fun aspects of the film is that you have no idea what that act could possibly be that is raking in so much dough until they stage it for the investigator in the last scene.  Then you realize, of course, at least in the Sixties, it would be hot boxoffice.  Much of the film is highly ambiguous—there are scenes set outside of the interrogation room where just two or three of the performers discuss their predicament with one another—and some of the ambiguity leads to sudden shifts in the dispositions of the characters that you can’t really buy into, even on multiple viewings.  Like All These Women, it is entirely understandable that the film never got any traction with the critics or the boxoffice, but now as a pristine entry—the transfer looks gorgeous—in a finite filmography, it is pretty much irresistible.  The stars are great, the narrative—which seems in part to be an Italian salute (you know—tapping the elbow on a raised forearm…) to Sweden’s tax policies—is all that is needed to set up the four artists as characters playing against one another and then unleashing them.  As the ideas, possibilities, and emotional explorations swirl around one another, Bergman’s visual approach to his filmed playlet is mesmerizing.

Cheers to the curators—it is continually amazing how well each film segues to the next, and that is certainly the case with The Rite leading into the sole film on platter 19, Bergman’s 1958 The Magician (Ansiktet), which culminates its first act with several officials interrogating a group of traveling performers.  Set in the Nineteenth Century and running 102 minutes, it is one of Bergman’s most entertaining features.  Not only does it follow its central story, in which a stage magician must validate his act before the officials if he is to avoid being thrown in jail, but there is enough time and flexibility to include nearly unrelated subplots about the downstairs help falling for the magician’s coachmen, giving the film strata of romance similar to Smiles of a Summer Night.  There are also valid discussions of the nature of magic and spirituality, and the similarity between the distractions a magician uses and how the clergy operate.  And then the third act becomes a horror feature, with thrills and chills, culminating in a happy ending.  The period décor is lovely and the squared full screen black-and-white cinematography has one rich, gorgeous shot after another.  Von Sydow is the magician, Björnstrand is his principal antagonist, and Bibi Andersson, Thulin, Ekborg, Naima Wifstrand and Bengt Ekerot are also featured.

We reviewed Criterion’s DVD in Dec 10.  Criterion also released the film as a freestanding Blu-ray (UPC#715515063913, $40), and it has the same beautiful transfer.  There are fleeting imperfections, including a hair on the bottom of the screen, a brief flash of impurities and a little grain here and there, but overall, it is transfixing.  Both platters have the same special features, a 4-minute interview for Swedish television with Bergman about his intentions for the film that he answers with an interesting and memorable parable, a great 21-minute audio-only conversation with Bergman and Olivier Assayas in English (but also supported by subtitling) mostly about the very beginnings of Bergman’s career up to shooting Crisis (“The first 3 weeks were a complete disaster.”) although there is a bit at the very end about Magician, and a 15-minute piece by Cowie about the film’s inspiration and meanings (the film is a comprehensive blast at Bergman’s own critics and a measured examination of the relationship between his works and his audiences), and the reason why the same character names pop up in his different movies.

One of Bergman’s most unambiguously pleasing films, his 1975 staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten), is presented as the first film on platter 20.  True, the film is being sung in Swedish rather than German, which can be disorienting to enthusiastic fans of the opera, but casual viewers will be less disturbed by this since the music itself penetrates all languages without alteration.  Indeed, Bergman opens the film with what we would today call a ‘music video,’ presenting the Overture to the opera over a meticulously timed montage of faces, supposedly of people attending the opera’s performance, from all over the world.  While most of the faces are Scandinavian, there are also Asian faces, African faces and so on, young and old, male and female, celebrating the work’s universality with true cinematic élan.  The opera itself is right up Bergman’s alley, being about a divorce that has gone terribly wrong, with both sides at equal fault although tilted to a male perspective, but it is also a joyful fairytale that ignores these realities to embrace the fantasies that enable one to weather difficult times.  Running 138 minutes, Bergman presents the film as a stage production, with shots both of the audience and the actors backstage sprinkled throughout the film, and the use of stagecraft for its magic that is no different from the stagecraft employed by Von Sydow’s character in The Magician, although Bergman also allows the camera free reign on the stage to transport the viewer into the fantastical world the characters are exploring.  Bergman had clearly been thinking about Magic Flute for a very long time, since there is an elaborate reference to the opera in Hour of the Wolf, and he brings his wide array of powers to bear to create a joyful and truly timeless masterpiece film rendition of an equally enduring masterpiece of music.

Criterion also released the film on a freestanding Blu-ray (UPC#715515227216, $40).  The squared full screen color image is identical on both releases, with accurate fleshtones and deliberately flat but carefully varied colors.  The image is solid and free of wear.  The sound is stereophonic, but do not get your hopes up too high.  Most of the time, the music remains centered, and left-right separations are sporadic, suppressed as much by the limitations of the recording itself as by the application of stereophonic effects.  That said, the music and the singing voices—the performers are opera stars, including Josef Köstlinger, Irma Urrila, Håkan Hagegård and Birgit Nordin—are smooth and fairly clean, so that the limitations in the dynamic range are compensated by the precision of delivery in the middle ranges.

Both presentations have the same special features (which, among other things, give you a chance to relive the film’s musical highlights again and again), including a terrific 1975 made-for-TV production documentary running 65 minutes that delves into many aspects of the movie’s creation; a good 18-minute appreciation and history of the film (and Bergman’s use of music in general in his movies) by Cowie; and a great 29-minute interview with Bergman from 1974 in which he talks about the opera, discussing the intricacies of his cinematic staging (in one dazzling moment, he explains how large the original stage where the opera was presented could be ascertained entirely by the number of measures it took for a character to walk from one point on that stage to the other) and working with the mostly novice cast.  He also explains the opera’s universal appeal and suggests the history behind its fascinating central plot twist.

Sharing platter 20 is Bergman’s nicely executed 1984 three-character, one-set telefilm, After the Rehearsal (Efter repetitionen).  Josephson is a director lingering on his minimally dressed stage in an otherwise empty theater, and Lena Olin is his young star, who returns after having left with others before the drama opens.  They have been working on August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (it’s a shame Criterion couldn’t also land Bergman’s actual 1963 telefilm adaptation of the play itself…), and since Josephson’s character awakens from a nap, it is offered as a possibility that everything which happens is in his imagination.  What is certainly a part of his imagination is when the mother of Olin’s character, played by Thulin, shows up—while Olin remains absolutely still on a couch—and tries to seduce Jospehson’s character.  The ensuing revelations and actions are best left for discovery, although the highpoint is the last movement in the 74-minute program, where Josephson and Olin’s characters essentially describe in a lengthy dual monolog what is undoubtedly something that has happened among theater people many a time.  The film is simple but absorbing, and is indeed about the untethered lives of those who have given themselves over to the theater, differentiating their emotional architecture from those who are not part of their passion. 

Visually, the film, letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1, is relaxed, allowing the characters to speak at length while performing a delicate balance between enlivening the exchanges without calling attention to the manipulation.  The transfer could use the restoration that most of the other programs in the set have gone through.  Fleshtones are pale, the image is grainy and soft, and there are small vertical lines from time to time.  Although the sound is listed as stereo it remains centered and would not have much in the way of a dimensional presence anyway, since there are no ambient sound effects or musical interludes.

Platter 21 begins with Bergman’s fascinating 1971 flop, The Touch (Beröringen), starring Bibi Andersson (with a Mia Farrow haircut) as a bored housewife, Von Sydow as her doctor husband, and Elliott Gould as a bipolar archeologist restoring a nearby church, who becomes her lover.  In some ways, this is the most normal movie in the collection.  Shot in Sweden, many of the settings have a suburban look to them, giving the film a strong sense of domesticity.  A little over half the film is in English.  While it is not entirely possible to wrap your head around what Andersson’s character sees in Gould’s character beyond, perhaps, an afternoon fling, the 115-minute feature essentially charts the path of their romance, jumping sometimes with disorientation from one situation in their relationship to the next.  That would be fine, except the movie ends that way, as well, in mid-leap, as it were.  There isn’t even a, ‘The End,’ or ‘Slutet.’  Instead, without even a black screen, the film goes back to the menu.  Now it would be highly tempting to assign Andersson as ‘Swedish filmmakers’ and Gould as ‘Hollywood’ and interpret the film that way, or you can look at it as kind of a role reversal for Bergman where Andersson actually has the guy part, and the two actors have the tolerant girl parts.  Or you can just take the film as a celebration of what was happening everywhere in movies in the early Seventies, exploring relationships, after the Sixties left everybody in the movie business unsure of what would work at the boxoffice and what wouldn’t.  It is best, however, to just accept the movie with all of the shortcomings that it has, enjoy the stars even if their characters are alienating (Gould, slapping her one moment and apologizing the next, definitely takes some chances, while for Von Sydow, being a wuss is also daring), soak up a bit of the atmosphere and local color (the church is interesting, and the apartment Gould’s character is staying in is a delightful horror), and go on to the next movie.  Except that the next movie on the platter is The Serpent’s Egg.

But before we get to that—the picture in The Touch is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, and while the image is a little soft at times, which is what happens when Nykvist tries to keep his lighting to a minimum.  The colors looks fresh and overall the image is in decent shape.  There are two subtitling options for the film, one that just translates the Swedish and one that covers both the Swedish and the English. 

Of all the outstanding documentaries about Bergman that have also been included within the supplements throughout the set, the 55-minute piece that was shot while Bergman was filming The Touch in 1971, which has been included with the film as a supplement, is the best of all.  Although admitting that some of it just boils down to the magic of subconscious creation, Bergman does his darnedest to explain how film directing works, while the documentarians capture numerous examples on the film’s set, from an improvisational rush to catch a shot in the rain and mist to sending Andersson back to wardrobe because her slacks don’t look right for a scene.  Presented in Swedish (except for Bergman’s conversations with Gould) supported, of course, by the subtitling, and including clips from a couple of Bergman’s other features, it is an amazingly earnest and truthful attempt to describe how Bergman makes a movie, consistently backed by riveting demonstrations of the master in process.

If there was any movie that was a bigger flop for Bergman than The Touch, it was the 1977 Dino de Laurentiis production, The Serpent’s Egg (the film did make money in Europe, but was widely frowned upon by critics everywhere).  If The Touch strove for normalcy, then The Serpent’s Egg strove for abnormalcy.  It is Cabaret meets Franz Kafka with a bunch of other things thrown in.  Shot in German and mostly in English, the film is set in the early Twenties in Berlin, when inflation was rampant and hatred for ethnic groups was simmering.  That the film still seems relevant when one watches it today is disturbing.  Bergman was given a larger checkbook than he normally received and the results are all there on the screen.  The sets may look dank, but they are epically dank, and if you are partial to the movie’s atmosphere—think dreary late autumn—then the film is worthwhile just for the mood it conveys.  That it also brings to mind Berlin Alexanderplatz, where Rainer Werner Fassbinder surreptitiously used the same sets, is a rewarding bonus emotion every time the film is viewed. 

David Carradine stars as a former circus performer whose brother has killed himself, and Ullmann is the brother’s widow, working in a nightclub like Sally Bowles (her musical numbers are delightfully inept—the film often has touches of humor amid the performances).  Gert Fröbe has a very welcome role—one doesn’t see enough of him in international films—as a police chief, and James Whitmore has a nice, brief part as a clergyman.  Eventually the 120-minute film leads to being about a demented scientist played by Heinz Bennent who has been experimenting on people to understand human endurance limitations, but that mostly happens off screen, so while the analogy to Nazism is the point of the film, the pleasures, after deciphering the narrative’s confusions, are Bergman’s command of how to stage a scene and the consistently transporting mood that he and Nykvist create.

We reviewed an Arrow Video Blu-ray of the MGM United Artists title in Feb 21.  While some lighting situations encourage the grain, when the image is bright, colors are fresh and finely detailed, and the image is smooth.  For the most part, the actors appear to eschew makeup, so every crease and bruise is visible, and they all look appropriately pale.  The differences in presentation between the Arrow and Criterion presentations are minimal, but Criterion’s version is a touch sharper, which adds to a viewer’s involvement with the drama.  The 5.1-channel DTS sound has a mild dimensionality and generally clean tones.  A 15-minute collection of promotional interviews that also appeared on the Arrow BD has been included.

The final assembly of films begins on platter 22 with another of Bergman’s great masterpieces presented singularly as Centerpiece 3, Persona.  From the very first frames where the viewer witnesses the ignition of a projector’s arc light, the 1966 film is about the excitement of film itself, about exploring and harnessing the powers of cinema for the sake of celebrating that same combustive arc between movies and life.  Right away there is a montage that one is tempted, with the advent of home video, to stop and step through frame by frame, particularly if one catches the brief snapshot of an erection or the relatively longer glimpse of a Hemingwayesque hand being pounded into wood with an ancient nail.  Bergman also includes shots from his other films, along with clips from silent comedies (albeit regarding death) and other images.  But it is best, at least the first dozen or so times one watches Persona, to let Bergman progress the film on his own terms, as it settles fairly quickly into an accessible narrative in which a nurse played by Bibi Andersson, first seen in her nursing outfit and heels, is assigned to care for a famous actress played by Ullmann, who is lying in a hospital bed mute and motionless (but still wearing eyeliner).  Like a Godard film, a television at one point is broadcasting a report on Vietnam, although the shot that Bergman zeroes in on is a famous news clip of a monk setting himself on fire, an actual image of death in process.  Throughout the film, there is on one hand the story (which, in part, questions the validity of a vocation in entertainment) and the self-consciousness of his experiments, but on the other hand there is an unrestrained enthusiasm for the plasticity and infinite potential of the film medium.  Persona, in essence, presents physical proof of justification for existence—its cinematic confections are absolute, intellectually nutritious candy—as it constructs a finely detailed portrait of individuals who are vexed by life’s choices and paths.

Björnstrand has a brief but critical supporting part.  Ullmann speaks virtually no dialog throughout the film, while Andersson is a chatterbox.  They leave the hospital to spend the majority of the 84-minute film at a secluded summer home near the water.  As Ullmann’s character gradually regains the habits of life, their relationship sways from attraction to irritation and forms a distinctive ‘Ego’ and ‘Id’ dynamic.  Throughout the film, however, Bergman’s experimentation never relents.  One shot gradually takes Ullmann’s face from complete illumination to total darkness.  Another merges the faces of the two actresses, and another achieves a contrast level so delicate that Ullmann enters a room like a ghost.  That the two actresses would ultimately both be involved in long term personal relationships with Bergman also weighs heavily on the film’s dynamics. 

Nykvist’s cinematography is exceptional even within the magnificent compendium of work that he did with Bergman.  The black-and-white picture, presented in a squared full screen format, displays an amazing sensitivity to the levels of light, grain and shadow in every frame.  Leading up the schism that occurs at the film’s literal halfway point, Andersson shares a very, very sexy story—another Godard-style touch—demonstrating the ability of film to convey narrative in the same manner as the first storytellers.  The film also has an exceptional musical score, which is quite unusual if one addresses Bergman’s work as a whole.  Composed by Lars Johan Werle, it is both primitive and sophisticated, creating an abstract movement of rhythm and melody that harmonize with the viewer’s eagerness to engage with the movie’s content.

We reviewed an MGM DVD in Jun 04.  Criterion has since issued the film as a three-platter DVD & Blu-ray (UPC#715515113410, $40).  The initial DVD looked fantastic, as does Criterion’s DVD presentation, which does not have an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback, but does have an upgraded transfer with better detail than the initial DVD.  The two Blu-ray presentations are identical, improving the crispness and detail of the image (and bringing a better consistency to the grain) and the strength and clarity of the sound in comparison to the DVD.  All three come with a trailer; an incisive and rewarding 20-minute analysis of the opening montage by Cowie; a really nice 20-minute Swedish TV interview with Bergman, Ullmann and Andersson from 1966; a wonderful 16-minute interview with the elderly Ullmann from 2013; an 8-minute interview with Bergman from 1970 about the film’s inception; a cogent 11-minute summary of the film’s historical significance and its different possible meanings by Paul Schrader, essentially saying that it was Bergman who certified Godard’s experimentations as a valid approach to the art of film; and 18 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage accompanied by enlightening narration that identifies the participants and goes over what was happening in the lives of the filmmakers at the time.

The final supplement included on the BD platters is featured by itself on the second DVD platter, an 84-minute documentary from 2013, Liv & Ingmar, about the relationship between Ullmann and Bergman that began, for all intents and purposes, during the making of Persona.  Narrated by Ullmann, she goes into great detail about their private lives, both the ups and the downs (now we know why we get such bad vibes from Shame and The Passion of Anna) as well as going over her experiences in shooting each of their films and other highlights of her life and career.  It also includes excerpts from letters Bergman wrote to her, while the images combine excerpts from the various behind-the-scenes compilations that were made from the films they shot together, clips from those films, personal snapshots and updated color footage from Fårö.

Leaping back to the late Forties to provide a breather between the heavy hitters, the two other films that Criterion included in Early Bergman are paired on platter 23, Thirst and Port of Call.  The 1949 Thirst (Törst) is about the life of a saucy dancer, played by Eva Henning, and is presented with jumbled flashbacks from about, give or take, three periods in her life.  The spine of the film depicts the return from an extended vacation with her husband, played by Malmsten, on a train traveling through post-War Germany.  The parallels between the state of their relationship and the state of the modern world are vague but purposeful.  As the trip moves along, the film also cuts to the story of her relationship with her first lover, a married serviceman, and eventually, it begins cutting to a later story, after Henning’s character (her performance is very good, particularly in how she ages) is widowed, and leaves another lover (her therapist), only to be confronted by era-exaggerated gay panic.  Suicide, which becomes less and less of an interest in Bergman’s later films, suddenly returns to the forefront as a theme in the movie.  In addition to his experiments in editing, Bergman also explores the use of light and camera position to advance the narrative.  While piecing the 84-minute film together the first time through might be a bit challenging, it is an admirable accomplishment, ruminating on the eternal problems that women are faced with in a world controlled by men, and how being irritable is sometimes the only way to cope with it.  The squared full screen black-and-white picture is smooth and spotless, a distinctive improvement over the slightly worn DVD.

Suicide also provides a rhyming sequence that opens the 1948 Port of Call (Hamnstad), which may be why the films are presented in a reverse chronology, although Port of Call is a more satisfying feature.  A sailor played by Bengt Eklund, who has decided to work the docks instead of shipping out, meets a young factory worker played by Nine-Christine Jönsson, who has had trouble with her mother and the authorities.  While both characters are substantially flawed, the patchy effort they make to stay together gives the film a more realistic feel than American romances during that era could muster.  Additionally, both Thirst and Port of Call stake out dramatic ground (and, perhaps, boxoffice) that American films could not touch at the time, with abortion providing a significant plot device in each.  The film was in effect a decade ahead of its time, and is as rewarding as the working class British romances and American social dramas that would eventually achieve popularity when taboos began to erode (nudged, perhaps, by what Bergman and others were exploring in other parts of the world).  Running 97 minutes, the film is a very satisfying entertainment, although rather than resting on his laurels, Bergman next turned to the experimentations in Thirst, which would eventually propel him to his greater works.  The squared full screen black-and-white picture has some vague evidence of disguised wear, but overall is in very good condition and is sharper and more solid than the nice looking DVD.

Nykvist won a long awaited and well deserved Oscar for his cinematography on the 1973 Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop), which appears by itself on platter 24.  In a boxed set filled to the brim with fantastic picture transfers, this is the best picture transfer of all.  For one thing, this is a film that demands a high bandwidth playback.  The many scene transitions within the movie are not fades to black but fades to red, in a house that is filled with red interiors, red objects and, well, even Ullmann’s character is a redhead.  Historically, those reds dissolve into blurs, even when we’ve seen the film in revival houses.  Criterion released the film separately on Blu-ray (UPC#715515142113, $40), and the reds were somewhat hazy and undefined there, as well, not much sharper than Criterion’s DVD we reviewed in Aug 01.  But the Cinema Blu-ray transfer is different.  Every frame is precise, and the hues are exactly replicated.  If the image is paused on a close-up of Ullmann, or co-stars Thulin, Harriet Andersson, and Kari Sylwan, they look astonishingly like good oil-painted portraits.  There is grain in the cinematography, but it blends magnificently, and each corner of every frame throughout the film is exactly perfect.

Some would claim that Bergman’s entire career worked toward and reached its pinnacle with Cries and Whispers—and then came in for a soft landing afterwards.  While we cannot entirely concur, the presentation in the Cinema box makes a substantial difference in how the film is beheld, to the point where this one offering is worth the expense of the box as a whole.  When one is in thrall of each and every shot, it becomes much easier to accept the idiosyncrasies of the drama.  During the late Nineteenth Century, two married sisters and a maid provide hospice for a third unmarried sister in the family mansion.  The sister dies at exactly the film’s midpoint, but the movie takes on a touch of ‘magical realism’ in order to continue to explore the relationships between all four women, as well as the metaphysical resonance—which chimes like one of the clocks in the house—of life and death.  The performances hold nothing back, which is something again that is much easier to accept and admire when every image is so spellbinding.  Josephson plays a doctor, Ek is a clergyman and Henning Moritzen and Georg Årlin are the husbands.  All told, the 91-minute film may explore the flaws and insecurities of women, but it takes an absolutely wicked view of men, to the point where the film’s conclusion seems almost satirical in its harsh depiction of marriage and reality.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1.  The monophonic sound on the Swedish audio track is clean and solid, enabling the viewer to catch every subtle noise.  Both releases also have an English language track, which lacks the critical rhythms of the Swedish track but does offer an opportunity to absorb the gorgeous picture without the distraction of the subtitles.  Both releases are also accompanied by the same special features.  Carried over from the DVD, there is a trailer and a fantastic 52-minute TV interview from 1999 with Bergman and Josephson.  Exclusive to the BDs are a 7-minute talk about the film by Bergman (whose Lynchian ‘red room’ vision was one of the film’s creative starting points); an enjoyable 20-minute interview with Andersson from 2012 reminiscing about the film (counterintuitively, they had a lot of fun on the set) and its possible meanings; 34 minutes of silent behind-the-scenes footage narrated by Cowie, who also uses the opportunity to provide a good overview of the film and Bergman’s filmmaking; and a vaguely artistic 13-minute analysis of the film.

Two films from the early Fifties that have never been released on disc in America before appear together on platter 25.  Neither is topnotch Bergman, but both have interesting and rewarding components that are magnified by their inclusion in the collection as a whole.  The 1952 Women Waiting (Kvinnors väntan) is sort of an anthology feature, running 108 minutes.  It begins with several women and their children staying together in a vacation house while they await the arrival of their husbands.  The evening that the husbands are to arrive stretches out a bit late and so three of them, in turn, share a story about an earlier tipping point in their relationships.  The first story calls to mind Smiles of a Summer Night, as the husband, upset over the wife’s professed infidelity, goes into a shed to shoot himself, a crisis that is easily resolved by a neighbor.  In the second tale, an unaccompanied woman goes into labor, and while on the table has an additional flashback to the men she knew in Paris (and how she threw over the nice sensible guy for the wilder artist). 

Both the bookend introductory setting and the first story are poorly staged (although, as we mentioned, the punchline to the first story is nicely executed), with stiff performances, overly showy cinematics and irritating emotional conflicts.  The second story is just slightly better, although it segues at one point into a gratuitous sequence at a topless can-can nightclub and the fates of the characters at its conclusion are not clearly related to the bookending segment.  But then, the film moves into the third tale, and it is an absolute delight.  Dahlbeck is self-conscious and almost immobilized during the bookend segment, but once she enters her tale her performance blossoms.  In all likelihood, this is because Björnstrand plays her husband and she is responding to his marvelously exact measurements of humor and angst.  The two married characters are drifting apart from one another in a typical upper class fashion until they are stuck together overnight in an elevator and get to know one another again, or perhaps for the first time.  The performances are perfect, Bergman’s staging is perfect and the sequence is so precious it not only raises a viewer’s spirits, but imbues the entire remainder of the film with a lingering sense of good will and joy.

The full screen black-and-white picture does have some vertical lines running through it on the right in spots, but overall it looks just fine, with smooth contrasts and clear detail.  It is also worth noting that Bergman duplicated the dynamic between Björnstrand’s character and a brother played by Håkan Westergren in Cries and Whispers with Moritzen and Årlin’s characters.

Not exactly material for a date night, Bergman’s 1958 Brink of Life (Nära livet) is set in the crisis ward of a hospital maternity unit, where three women are experiencing particularly difficult pregnancies.  Bibi Andersson, Thulin and Dahlbeck star, with Von Sydow and Josephson.  Björnstrand has a very brief appearance.  The film is far more earnest about weaving three separate narratives into a single story than was Women Waiting.  As the drama shifts from one heroine to the next and back again, the characters also do their best to support one another during their ordeals.  While there are some gratuitous shots of breast feeding—particularly one that includes a dribble of milk coming out of the nipple, which was likely included to push the boundaries of the international boxoffice—the 85-minute film has a highly involving story.  It is not only contemplative of the universally profound nature of pregnancy, but of the precarious emotional realities that affect each individual’s birthing experience in a unique way based upon both personality and personal situation.  It is an excellent film and well deserves more recognition than it has previously received.

The full screen black-and-white picture is free of blemishes, with a smooth image and sharp contrasts.

Again, platter 25 appears to have been intended as a palate cleanser before moving on to the single feature on platter 26, the only collaboration of the two namesake cinematic icons, Ingmar Bergman directing Ingrid Bergman in the 1978 Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten).  Alas, Bergman (Ingmar) blew it.  Like Crisis, he felt compelled to create dramatic overkill in his drama, not just adding a belt to the suspenders, but another suspender and a couple of more belts, as well.  Like Cries and Whispers, however, the film gains a great deal of tolerance simply because the Blu-ray transfer is so beautiful and such a great improvement over earlier iterations of the film’s release.  Nevertheless, its inherent flaws prevent it from being the masterpiece that it otherwise would have been simply because of its casting and basic premise.  Indeed, the film is so loaded with great talent that there are only a couple of shots of Björnstrand, but his performance in each is exquisite.  As for the bulk of the 93-minute feature, Bergman (Ingrid) portrays a famous concert pianist and Ullmann portrays her adult daughter, the wife of a clergyman played by Halvar Björk.  The two invite Bergman’s character to stay at their home (during a picturesque Fall that is captured with his usual superlative regard by Nykvist), having not seen her in more than a decade.  So far, so good.  The problem is that Bergman (Ingmar) doubles down on what is already a combustible situation by introducing a second daughter, played by Lena Nyman, who is living with the couple and has severe physical challenges.  So instead of just letting the love and resentments and desire and distrust simmer, the director blows it all up by using Nyman’s character as a blatant metaphor for emotional blockage.  It is Drama 101.  The viewer ought to come away filling in the resolutions and remaining connected to the story after it is concluded.  Instead, everything is SPELLED OUT with nothing left for the viewer’s imagination, wasting the fantastic performances, especially by Bergman and Ullmann, and the equally exceptional and abundant wealth of close-ups and two-shots of the actresses at the top of their games.  The film is as frustrating as it is great, and perhaps demonstrates that Bergman (Ingmar) was only human and had to use Nyman’s character to avoid examining the real conflicts between art and family in his own life.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1.  Criterion previously released a standalone Blu-ray (UPC#715515110015, $40).  Although it is a different transfer, there appears to be no significant variances between the two, both of which are an improvement over the now weak-looking Criterion DVD (Mar 00).  The autumnal colors (inside and outside) are always sharply defined and solidly presented, and the close-ups of the actresses are thrilling.  Toggling back and forth, we could not tell which version we were looking at.  The monophonic sound is also identical and stronger than the DVD, and there is an alternate English language track that has some advantages to using Bergman and Ullmann’s voices, but feels more disconnected than the Swedish track.  A commentary by Cowie that appeared on the DVD has been carried over on both BDs.  Additionally, both BDs have the same special features, including a trailer and an 8-minute talk about the film by the director from 2003 (notably, throughout the supplement there are never any references to Intermezzo), who mentions the initial problems he had with Ingrid Bergman’s approach to the role.  There is a 39-minute interview with Ingrid Bergman in front of a live audience, talking about her entire career but also about the film.  A 19-minute interview with a much older Ullmann from 2013 includes fascinating stories regarding Ingrid Bergman’s apprehension about what Ingmar Bergman had written for her and the differences between how the two actresses responded not just to his direction, but to his vision.  She also talks about Ingmar’s shortcomings (“I think most of his movies [look] back at the way his own parents had been.  Parenting himself, he was not a great parent.  I think his children will agree on that, because he was someone who worked, someone who would leave the mothers and find another woman and be parent to some other child.  He knew very little about parenting.  Many of them felt enormously proud to be his child.”)

Finally, there is a 207-minute collection of behind-the-scenes footage, stretching from the table reads and extensive rehearsals (including a fascinating segment about how the actresses learned and practiced their piano sequences) through the entire shoot and then the promotional press conferences.  Although it rarely lets on to the tensions that all three reference in the other supplements (Ingmar Bergman is always hugging or holding hands with everybody) or the severity of the illness that Ingrid Bergman was undergoing at the time, it is still a highly rewarding portrait of Ingmar Bergman at work.  Essentially, you see him early on making decisions about such matters as the set decorations, blocking and lighting, so as he gets closer and closer to the actual shoot he can focus entirely on what the already well-prepared actors are doing, with the same obsessive attentiveness that he gave to the flower vases several weeks earlier.  You also see how closely Nykvist was involved with every step of the production, including his presence at the table read.  At times there are glimpses of the artists at rest, as well, chatting about all sorts of things, from Bertolt Brecht’s post-War career to who will be socializing with whom on a given evening.  And in one conversation about the script’s shortcomings, Ingmar Bergman even admits all too accurately, “I’m a hack compared to Chekhov.”

The Closing Night program on platter 27 would actually make for a very long evening, since it is another five-part 1982 miniseries running a total of 320 minutes, Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander), identified as The Television Version, although the show’s 189-minute theatrical abridgement, identified as The Theatrical Version, created for the international market like Scenes from a Marriage, was a huge hit and is presented on platter 28.  Additionally, The Making of Fanny and Alexander (Dokument Fanny och Alexander), which Bergman directed himself, is presented on platter 29.  All three of these programs were also released in a separate three-platter Blu-ray set with the ampersanded title, Fanny & Alexander, by Criterion (UPC#715515088718, $60).

The advantage to The Television Version is immediately recognizable, since the first episode is, by itself, one of the all-time great Christmas movies (it runs almost 90 minutes), nostalgically capturing all of the warmth and joy that the event could hold as it depicts the Christmas Eve gathering of an extended family at the matriarch’s grand mansion at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.  Unless you are a fire marshal, in which case your head will immediately explode upon the sight not only of lit candles populating the branches of Christmas trees throughout the house but, near the end of the evening, the feathers from a pillow fight billowing around them, the episode is as much of a treasure as your most precious tree ornament.  Even though the next episode turns darker and that darkness persists until it is rescued at the end (fire marshals will get to say, ‘I told you so,’ before the show is over), the opening episode creates such a warm tone that it carries the viewer through the ups and downs that the characters face.  Although it is longer than Scenes from a Marriage, it seems to go by much more quickly and is worth digesting in a single day.  The series also contains vague echoes to Smiles of a Summer Night, the flashback sequences in Wild Strawberries and others, but more importantly, it anticipates, quite specifically, After the Rehearsal (that film’s stars, Josephson and Olin, also have supporting roles), and actually provides a pertinent quote from Strindberg’s A Dream Play (all the more reason to somehow dredge up Bergman’s telefilm recording of that production) to close things out.  That quote essentially says that in fiction, ‘anything can happen,’ and it is why the miniseries makes such outstanding cinema.

Although many of the members of the family, and even their servants, are thoroughly developed and advanced as the story proceeds, the focus is on a widowed actress, played by Ewa Fröling, and her two young children—represented in the show’s title—played by Pernilla Allwin and Bertil Guve.  The actress remarries a bishop and soon discovers she has entered Hell, as do her children.  The story is almost a straightforward drama, except that, from the very beginning, odd things happen (since Guve’s character momentarily falls asleep at the film’s beginning, albeit in what looks like a very uncomfortable position, everything else in the story could be just an irritated dream).  The boy sees ghosts and apparitions.  Another character performs magic, including a moment during the most critical plot turn in the story.  Off and on, the show is also set in the world of the theater, and, off and on, it addresses the imperatives of theology.  Gunn Wållgren, Kristina Adolphson, Börje Ahlstedt, Kristian Almgren, Carl Billquist and Harriet Andersson (wearing cockeyed glasses) also have supporting roles. 

The film is not perfect.  Allwin’s character is more of an addendum than she is intrinsic to the drama.  Bergman also continues to glorify or otherwise justify the habits of men taking on mistresses in addition to their wives (and their wives not minding all that much).  But what Bergman manages to accomplish with the miniseries seems to be a sweeping testament to his entire career—the sacrifices and the joys of committing one’s life to the entertainment of others, encompassing the camaraderie, artistry, excitement, humor (something Bergman’s reputation clearly seems to have shortchanged from reality), convoluted romance and spiritual exploration that filled not only his work, but his life.  As the show builds to its climax (with a deceptive offhandedness amid the intrigue of the major plot turns and character imperatives), Bergman slyly creates a multi-layered metaphysical cyclorama, so that as much as the program might be a coy and jovial autobiographical fable (with stingers), it is also a sweeping appreciation of the relationship between authorship and existence.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1 and the color transfer is gripping from beginning to end, which enhances the glory of the program all the more.  Fleshtones are smooth and accurate, and colors pop enthusiastically.  Since Nykvist was shooting for television, there are many close-ups, but because the transfer looks so nice there is nothing mundane or common about the compositions.  The shows production designs are a wonderful treat—not just the Christmas decorations but the pointed dichotomy between life outside of the bishop’s house and life within—and again are made all the more captivating by the beauty of the transfer.  There is surprisingly little grain throughout the program, although what there is becomes slightly more pronounced on the Cinema version in comparison to the freestanding BD.  Otherwise, the presentations look identical.  For some reason, on both presentations, the closing credits have been left off the second episode, although they are present on the other four.

At two-thirds the length, The Theatrical Version is a wonderful tease, but it is too compromised to achieve the full power and satisfaction that The Television Version achieves.  Many of the scenes involving the peripheral characters and the theater are gone, as is some of the context for the inclusion of magic, which turns a critical plot point into what mistakenly feels like a continuity error (the ghosts, on the other hand, still work beautifully, although some of them have been lost, as well).

Additionally, The Theatrical Version appears to have a slightly less immediate image transfer than The Television Version.  It may not be a full generational difference, but fleshtones are a little blander and other hues are not quite as vivid.  Without The Television Version to compare it with, The Theatrical Version looks absolutely fine, and remains intricately detailed, but overall it is not as satisfying.  And again, the ampersand presentation of The Theatrical Version is slightly brighter than the Cinema version.  In this case, the differences are nearly imperceptible and would not make a great deal of difference in one’s subliminal appreciation of the film, but it is discernible here and there.  An Intermission that was present on Criterion’s DVD (Jan 05) has been eliminated.  Along with a trailer, Theatrical Version features a commentary by Cowie that originally appeared on the DVD, as is an English language track that lets you spend more time soaking up the atmosphere instead of reading subtitles (but dampens the intensity of Guve’s cursing).

The Making of Fanny and Alexander runs 110 minutes, and is one of several lengthy production documentaries that Bergman allowed during the creation of his films in the Seventies and Eighties.  In that they have all been included with their respective features in the Cinema set, specifically Winter Light, The Magic Flute, The Touch and Autumn Sonata, they comprise an outstanding and exhaustive portrait of Bergman at work (although, as Alfred Hitchcock often pointed out, shooting a film is easy, it is the preparation that takes all of the effort), allowing the viewer to surmise, through the extensive documentary footage, Bergman’s general demeanor on the set, how he works with actors and with Nykvist, and how there are still many, many details that only he understands, which are somehow sitting inside of his head and flow forth with the staging and execution of each shot. 

Björnstrand has a small but delightful part in the The Television Version, incidentally, that did not make the cut for The Theatrical Version, appearing on stage in clown makeup with a candle on his head singing a song, but in compensation, Bergman includes a lengthy piece depicting the shooting of that segment.  The 1975 documentary also shows Bergman specifically coaching the two kids through their most challenging scenes (as well as the pillow fight), and timing out some of the more elaborate staging with Nykvist and the rest of the cast and the crew.  The picture is presented in a squared, full screen format and is somewhat grainy, with slightly faded colors.  The presentation is identical to the presentation in the ampersand release.  Included as well on the third platter of both releases is a lovely 39-minute collection of retrospective interviews with various members of the cast and crew (including Guve, all grown up) that provide more rewarding insights on the film’s creation, and several features that originally appeared on the DVD—a lovely 7-minute montage of set design models, a big still frame collection of production photos and costume designs, and a 59-minute promotional interview in which Bergman, along with talking about the film’s autobiographical components and so on, suggests that he would stop making films for theatrical release, which he had sort of done already, since everything he made after Autumn Sonata was initially intended for television.

The final platter 30 contains additional supplements that sort of address retrospectively the many pleasures the Cinema collection has provided.  In a 57-minute interview with Bergman from 1978 (he had just turned sixty) on the British TV series about culture, The South Bank Show, he jovially talks about several of the films he made over the years, how they affect him personally and the circumstances surrounding their creation.  One of the pleasures of the segment is the way in which it revisits highlights from the Cinema set as a whole.  A more artistic and compact collection of highlights, a 15-minute montage of Bergman clips created in 2011 for an exhibition on Bergman’s career, entitled Laterna Magica, breaks the screen into four quadrants and presents images and sounds from his films, matching the images, which are often duplicated, so that they rhyme.  Some Bergman fanatic had a great time putting it together, and after experiencing the complete set, it is a nice little treat.  The 15-minute interview with Nykvist that appeared on the Through the Glass Darkly BD in the Film Trilogy set is included. 

Although billed as an interview with a female perspective, a 29-minute roundtable discussion from 2007 with Bibi Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Pernilla August and stage actress Elin Klinga is more simply about Bergman’s relationship with actors and how he worked with him.  As Andersson explains, “I think a great part of his secret was that he chose people with whom he connected and who understood him, and vice versa.”  The discussion also turns to the enormous amount of work he did on the stage and how he tended to be more relaxed and playful in that environment, because the money clock was not ticking quite so forcefully.

Filmmaker Stig Björkman put together behind-the-scenes footage from a number of films, including Saraband, Shame, Cries and Whispers, After the Rehearsal and From the Life of the Marionettes in 2010 and sprinkled in a number of voiceover testimonials from famous filmmakers, including Bernardo Bertolucci, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese and a brief little remembrance by Woody Allen, to create a 69-minute testimonial elegy entitled …But Film Is My Mistress (taken from a loaded quote by Bergman that begins, “Theater is my wife…”).  The additional production footage is super, and the film is a worthwhile rumination upon Bergman’s artistry particularly during the more mature phase of his career.

Nyreröd had plenty of leftover material from her Bergman Island documentary and compiled the outtakes for what is essentially another 70-minute Bergman profile, made up of shorter pieces (each of which has opening and closing credits), which were compiled in 2017 and has the luxury of not addressing his life’s work, but poking around the periphery instead.  He talks about telephones (he likes their anonymity, and can hear suppressed emotions in the voices that he would not notice if distracted by a person’s intended façade), his limited personal wardrobe, dreams, how the same character names turn up in so many of his features (“It’s probably just a lack of imagination on my part.”), how much he dislikes summer, his temper and so on, as little bits about his creative process also seep into the conversations.  Since the interviews were shot near the end of his life, it is a very lovely capstone on the entire set.

***

Enough to fill at least one more Eclipse collection if Criterion would only go back to releasing them, a few Bergman features from the Forties and Fifties did not make the cut in Cinema, notably Prison.  He also made quite a few telefilms, many based upon his stage productions, and these, too, would make several terrific Eclipse anthologies.  But there is only one feature film from Bergman’s superstar period that didn’t make it into Criterion’s box, his harrowing 1976 Face to Face, which is fortunately available, on DVD at least, from Paramount, StudioCanal and Olive Films (UPC#887090024402, $30). 

In a fabulous showcase performance, Ullmann portrays the temporary head of a psychiatric hospital during the summer holidays.  To say much more about the 136-minute feature would spoil its primary surprises, but the film is an intense dissection of an attempted suicide, and in the same way that the movie’s marketing utilized a play upon Rorschach test ink splatters, so will the details of the film itself be apprehended differently by every viewer, depending upon what sort of psychological baggage has accompanied them to the screening.   

Björnstrand plays the ailing grandfather of Ullmann’s character, and Josephson, whose role is more substantial but less showy, plays a colleague.  For the most part, Bergman’s direction is superb.  He clearly delineates most of the fantasy sequences, dressing Ullmann in a red outfit that could conceivably have inspired Margaret Atwood, consciously or subconsciously, and he gives Ullmann free reign to let loose with dramatic opportunities rarely afforded an actress in such abundance.  But he blows it at other times, particularly a baffling scene with the daughter of Ullmann’s character, played by Helene Friberg, who has no perceptible reaction to what her mother tells her.  As with his other films, infidelity appears to be an accepted social norm, pretty much like having lunch.  Nevertheless, the film is both intriguing and rich in emotional vulnerabilities, and is unquestionably a worthwhile component of Bergman’s oeuvre, not just as a catalog entry, but as a cinematic experience.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback.  Colors are fresh and fleshtones are accurate, but the image is much softer than the images on the Blu-rays.  More irritating, however, is the monophonic sound, which has a pronounced raspiness not just with the dialog, but even with many of the sound effects and much of the music.  The De Laurentiis production is in Swedish with optional English subtitles.