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Swedish films
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After the great Ingmar Bergman, Victor Sjöström is unquestionably the second most important figure in Swedish cinema. Not only was he an accomplished actor, appearing in over forty films, but he was also one of the world’s greatest cineastes, achieving success both in Hollywood and his native Sweden. Sadly...
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"A bona fide fiasco" was how Ingmar Bergman described his directorial debut. Sweden’s leading film production company Svensk Filmindustri commissioned him to direct Crisis on the strength of his screenplay for Torment (1944), a popular film which amply demonstrated Bergman’s skill as a writer. Previously, Bergman had had some experience of directing stage plays and was chafing...
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With three films under his belt, Ingmar Bergman’s prospects as a film director were not looking all that promising. The failure of his first film Crisis (1946) had lost him the confidence of his first backer, Svensk Filmindustri. Two further flops for independent film producer Lorens Marmstedt and Bergman was definitely heading for the door marked "exit"...
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It was whilst he was actively directing theatre productions in Gothenburg that Ingmar Bergman somehow found the time to make this, his fifth film, set in the busy Swedish port. It was the first of Bergman’s films to register as a commercial success, and certainly, of his early films, this is one of the most watchable...
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In Prison, an early experimental work made on a ludicrously small budget, director Ingmar Bergman begins to explore themes of existence, identity and faith which would become major preoccupations in later years. The film’s budgetary restrictions – which limited the shooting period to 17 days, kept the number of sets to an absolute minimum and resulted in most of the cast and crew...
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It wasn’t until he directed Three Strange Loves, aka Thirst, that Ingmar Bergman revealed something of the genius for cinematic art and deep understanding of the human psyche for which he is now revered. It was his seventh film, coming after a number of uninspired melodramas and poorly received experimental works...
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After the unremittingly grim tone of Bergman’s preceding films, To Joy marks a distinct change in the director’s outlook on life and his art. There is darkness and a sadness to this film which is distinctly Bergmanesque, but there’s also a sense of exhilaration and gratitude for life, which is barely glimpsed in Bergman’s earlier work...
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The transience of all good things – love, happiness and life itself – is a prevailing theme in the work of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Aside from the human dimension - how we learn to cope with loss and accept our own mortality – there are metaphysical concerns – what kind of God allows beauty to be created and then snuffed out so tragically and so apparently...
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One film that stands out in the earlier part of Ingmar Bergman’s film career is Sawdust and Tinsel, a bleak yet poignant portrayal of a group of circus folk, a film which touches on themes that would grow to dominate much of the director’s later work. Fundamentally, the film is about the conflict between the opposing forces that afflict human consciousness...
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The film that earned Ingmar Bergman the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1957 and established his reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers of his age was The Seventh Seal, a bizarre morality tale which explores religious and philosophical themes with startling originality and efficacy. Some of cinema’s most iconic images are to be seen in this film...
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In The Magician, the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman combines the elements of the expressionist horror film and traditional farce to make some deeply felt statements about bourgeois hypocrisy and the failings of human nature. The film is stylistically masterful – the atmospheric black and white photography capturing the creepy mood of the darkest Edgar Allen Poe story...
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The Devil’s Eye is something of an oddity in the filmography of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman – an eccentric comedy affording a rare excursion into the fantasy genre. Stylistically, the film is a world apart from the kind of film Bergman is generally known for, eschewing realism for a quirky kind of theatricality...
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Even for those who are well acquainted with the work of Ingmar Bergan, there is a primitive rawness and brutality about The Virgin Spring which makes it a particularly bleak and shocking film. Inspired by a Medieval Swedish ballad, the film explores the conflict between base human instincts and the higher spiritual qualities...
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With its stark minimalist composition and austere yet strangely alluring presentation, Through a Glass Darkly is a quintessentially Bergman-esque study in those essential components of human experience – love, faith and hope. It is the first in a remarkable series of three films (the others being Winter Light and The Silence) in which director Ingmar Bergman explores Man’s relationship...
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Winter Light is the second chapter in Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy of "chamber films" which explore faith and Man’s relationship with God in the twentieth century. Sandwiched between Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence, Winter Light is a bleak, existentialist work which allowed Bergman to draw on his own personal experiences and to express the spiritual conflict he had endured...
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The Silence is easily one of Ingmar Bergman’s darkest, most disturbing and most ambiguous films. It was also one of his biggest commercial successes – on account of its explicit sex scenes which, at the time, were rather daring, although by today’s standards they are pretty tame. The film is usually considered as the third part in a trilogy of films which includes Through...
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The films of Ingmar Bergman fall crudely into two categories. First, there are those which are works of great depth and feeling, films of genuine artistic merit in which the director invested every last drop of conscious effort and which reveal great humanity and insight. Then there are the films which Bergman made, either under a restrictive contract or at a time of personal crisis...
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Perhaps the most significant thing about Persona, Ingmar Bergman’s most profound, self-consciously artistic and disturbing film, is that the director regarded it as one of his most important works. It’s a fascinating piece of cinematic art in which Bergman explores two of the themes which interested him most...
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Shame is possibly the closest that director Ingmar Bergman came to making a political film, although its ambiguity provides ample scope for interpretation and speculation as to what his intention was in making this film. It’s probable the film was inspired by the seemingly interminable war in Vietnam, the most destructive conflict since the Second World War...
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The Passion of Anna completes a loose trilogy of films in which director Ingmar Bergman examines how external factors can influence a person’s psychology and result in the break-up of a close male-female relationship. It follows the expressionistic Hour of the Wolf (1968) and the wartime drama Shame (1968), with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann playing the lead characters in all three...
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