Dir. W.S. Van Dyke. Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Gene Hackman, Liv Ullmann, Eileen Heckart There’s nothing inherently weird about the idea of a disaster movie where the first three-quarters of it have nothing to do with the disaster itself. The reason Titanic turned into this enormous phenomenon was not really… Read More San Francisco (1936) and Zandy’s Bride (1974)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Julia Dufvenius, Liv Ullmann, Borje Ahlstedt Image links back here Music is a discipline too often taken for granted, I think; there’s a sense in the popular imagination that all musicians are either Mozart reborn, effortlessly cranking out the hits, or teetering on the edge of personal collapse à la Johnny… Read More Saraband (2003)
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 Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson There may not be an actor whose star persona has interested me more in the past eighteen months than Max von Sydow’s. (I admit to a limited understanding of his Scandinavian film career outside of Bergman and Jan Troell, so I’m not going to… Read More The Passion of Anna (1969)
The following is from my series of Oscar Best Picture rankings, as well as my strongly worded suggestions for what should have won from among the nominees. For an introduction to the project, click here. For a way to vote on some Oscar-related ideas, click here. If I’ve written a review on any of the… Read More Better than the Oscars: 40-36
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand Dinner is wine, fish, vegetables, bread, butter. Eva (Ullmann) and Jan (von Sydow) sit outside on a bench underneath a tree, not so far underneath the tree that many shadows fall on them. This scene looks primarily at Eva over Jan’s shoulder. He frequently… Read More Shame (1968)
Dir. Jan Troell. Starring Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Eddie Axberg (My review of The Emigrants, which is less the first movie in a two-part series than it is the first half of this film, is here.) “We’ll have to figure out what that means,” Karl Oskar (von Sydow) murmurs as he reads over a… Read More The New Land (1972)
I’ve completed a series of episode-by-episode reviews of the television miniseries Scenes from a Marriage. I’ve decided to make it easier to access these posts as part of a group by making this page as an index. I’ve also added a short synopsis of each episode so that you can find what you’re looking for quickly.… Read More Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Gunnel Lindblom (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) It’s not surprising that in this final episode, more like an epilogue than an actual continuation of the plot, Johan and Marianne seem to be back together. They are no longer married. He’s married to an Anna,… Read More Scenes from a Marriage, S1E6, “In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World”
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson (My thoughts on the previous episode are here.) The windowless walls of Johan’s office are utterly bare, a bland taupe that makes the room seem close even when he’s sitting there by himself and which, as the episode carries on, makes it seem like entire setting is… Read More Scenes from a Marriage S1E5, “The Illiterates”
Seeing Things Secondhand 