Content warning – Ingmar Bergman’s films frequently deal with mature issues concerning sexuality, cruelty, or both. Many significant spoilers below, in case you are a budding Bergman fan and don’t want to know. In fairness, all of the movies noted below are at the very least thirty-six years old. It’s not every day one’s favorite… Read More Seven Sevens: The Ingmar Bergman Centennial
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bertil Guve, Ewa Froling, Jarl Kulle The first ninety minutes of Fanny and Alexander are among the most moving ninety minutes in Ingmar Bergman’s entire oeuvre, which sounds impossible because they are, by and large, intensely joyful. No one describes Christmas at Grandmother Ekdahl’s (Gunn Wallgren) as anything other than “joyful,” and it’s… Read More Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Allan Edwall There’s not much sympathy left in the world for Tomas Ericsson (Bjornstrand). Surely that must have been true, to some extent, in the ’60s, but it is all the more accurate five decades on. Tomas is financially stable. He is a practitioner of an old… Read More Winter Light (1963)
Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg (This review is a bit more awkward than the average movie review I do, because The Emigrants is not really its own film any more than Fellowship of the Ring is its own film. The New Land, released the year after The Emigrants, is… Read More The Emigrants (1971)
Seeing Things Secondhand 