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Ingmar Bergman: Faces of Faith and Doubt

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
Ingmar Bergman

Top 10 Ranking

Film	Year
1. Persona	1966
2. The Seventh Seal	1957
3. Fanny and Alexander	1982
4. Cries and Whispers	1972
5. Autumn Sonata	1978
6. Winter Light	1963
7. The Virgin Spring	1960
8. The Silence	1963
9. Wild Strawberries	1957
10. Hour of the Wolf	1968

*Bergman sheds a warm, orange light over the interiors of Autumn Sonata, offsetting the harshness of its complicated mother-daughter relationship with a delicate tenderness.*

Best Film

Persona. This may stand as the finest formal synthesis of Ingmar Bergman’s intimate visual style of close-ups and his deeply psychological subject matter, examining the perplexing duality which simultaneously defines humans as social beings and distinct individuals. All abstract truths conceived in one’s mind must be filtered through some sensory expression to reach the outer world, and Bergman does not discount his own film from that inevitable distortion. The raw materials of cinema itself become integral to Persona’s very form, fully recognising the impossible task of creating any pure representation of reality. It is deceitful in its purposeful manipulations, but also intricately designed to evoke truths through bold, symbolic expressions. Persona features career-best work from cinematographer Sven Nykvist, editor Ulla Ryghe, and actresses Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, but it is in the way Bergman formally integrates every element of cinema at his disposal to create such an obscure, avant-garde interrogation of identity that places it right at the top.

The defining shot of Bergman’s entire career, catching both Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson’s faces looking downward in silhouette, but there is also incredible formal detail with the emphasis of Andersson’s mouth – she represents outward expressions in contrast to Ullmann’s silent introspection.

Most Overrated

Wild Strawberries. To be fair, this can only be considered overrated by comparing where it sits on my list versus the TSPDT ranking. There, the critical consensus places it as the 61^st best film of all time, and Ingmar Bergman’s 2^nd best film after Persona. I’ve got 8 other Bergman films ahead of it, but that has more to do with the strength of those than the weakness of Wild Strawberries, which is still a borderline masterpiece. There are very few negative criticisms that can be levelled at this beautifully surreal meditation on mortality, regret, and lost time.

*One of the finest compositions and edits of Wild Strawberries arrives in this long dissolve, sending a flock of crows flying across Professor Isak Borg’s head as we slip into his dreams.*

Most Underrated

All These Women. This sits far outside the TSPDT top 1000 at #9283, putting it in the very bottom tier of Ingmar Bergman’s films on the site. It has also been critically panned from some great critics, including Roger Ebert who called it Bergman’s worst film. This brightly coloured pastiche is certainly about the furthest thing one could imagine from the black-and-white meditations on faith which have defined his greatest artistic triumphs up to this point. Even his previous comedies such as Smiles of a Summer Night carry a more eloquent wit than the slapstick and buffoonery he happily indulges in here, which we see one snobbish music critic awkwardly inflict on the film’s country chateau setting while visiting famed cellist Felix. Flawed it may be, but Bergman’s experimentations with colour palettes and irreverent self-reflexivity build towards a single, unified point – art has no real relevance to the narcissistic pretensions of artists.

All These Women is closer to Peter Greenaway in its visual design than any other Ingmar Bergman film. The rigorous blocking may not be new for him, but the heavily curated colour palette and self-reflexive humour is. A rapid yet brief shift of gears that pays off in this instance, despite its formal flaws.

Gem to Spotlight

Sawdust and Tinsel. This would later be topped by many other Ingmar Bergman films, but in 1953 it was his best film to date, and the strongest hint that he was capable of creating truly great cinema. Life is a circus that creates entertainment out of humiliation, he posits in its central metaphor, and in his rich staging and screenwriting he needles its existential drama with a finer, wittier point than ever before. He finds both sympathy and pity for its hapless fools doomed to eternal ridicule, yet continues to undercut their dreams of escape with constant reminders of their own inadequacy. If there is any solace to be found, at least the humiliating stories they accumulate will make for great comic fodder down the track, offering momentary distractions from their sad, squalid circumstances.

Bergman’s blocking of faces is among the best in the art form’s history, even before he came out with his first masterpiece. Much of this has to do with the lighting, the depth of field, and of course, the actors.

Key Collaborator

Sven Nykvist. There’s a good number of actors who could fill this slot too, including Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, and Gunnar Björnstrand, but from The Virgin Spring onward Sven Nykvist is Ingmar Bergman’s most frequent and consistent collaborator. If he isn’t history’s greatest cinematographer, then he’s at least in the top 3, proving his hand at capturing both the harsh austerity of Sweden’s barren scenery and the vibrancy of rigorously curated colour palettes. Most of all though, it is his intimate close-ups which define his aesthetic with Bergman, turning faces into landscapes with the potential to be shot in an unlimited number of angles, lighting setups, and arrangements within ensembles.

*Cries and Whispers is simply one of the greatest displays of mise-en-scène put to screen, drifting through these powerful colour compositions of red, black, and white with masterful blocking.*

*Fanny and Alexander is one of Bergman’s three most beautifully shot films, competing with Persona and Cries and Whispers for the top spot.*

Cultural Context and Artistic Innovations

Early Melodramas (1946 – 1950)

Although Ingmar Bergman’s love of cinema began during his years as a literature and art student at Stockholm University College, his fascination with human relations, faith, and dreams are rooted even more deeply in his childhood. The estrangement he felt from his father, a strict Lutheran minister, would manifest in many of his films as crushing emotional and spiritual isolation, especially taking the form of melodramas in his early years.

The development of his artistic voice was slow but sure. Many of the films from this era of his career were romances and tragedies that saw young love wither into resentment, with some mix of suicide, rape, trauma, and cheating thrown in the mix. These narratives also played heavily on flashbacks contrasting the innocence of youth against the depressing burden of reality, further expressed through some sharp yet eloquent eviscerations.

“I hate you so much that I want to live just to make your life miserable. Raoul was brutal. You took away my lust for life.”
Rut (Thirst, 1949)

Easily the most consequential stylistic trait that Bergman would start developing around this time though was his blocking and framing of faces in close-ups. Port of Call is the earliest instance of this, but Thirst would push it a little further with Bergman’s first notable use of what would become one of his trademark shots – the profile of one face half-obscuring another behind it.

*The first instance of this trademark shot appears in Thirst, half-obscuring one actor’s face with the profile of another.*

Port of Call features some solid location shooting. In choosing to shoot on authentic docks and harbours, Bergman establishes his setting as a working-class port town, imbuing his characters’ troubles with a nuanced sorrow that connects to her helpless, abject poverty.

*A beautiful use of dissolves in To Joy, illustrating his characters’ passions for music by visually merging them with it.*

The Summer Years (1951 – 1955)

This is the most suitable title for the next stage of Ingmar Bergman’s career for two good reasons. From 1951 to 1955, he directed three films with Summer in the title – Summer Interlude, Summer with Monika, and Smiles of a Summer Night. Later in his career he would tick off the three other seasons with The Virgin Spring, Winter Light, and Autumn Sonata, but for now his fascination laid in this fleeting period of daylight, growth, and abundance that precedes darker, colder days.

This is also the era when his cinematic artistry and reputation began to lift off the ground, seeing him further refine his style and hit greater heights than he did in the 1940s. Romantic tragedies and melancholy flashbacks are often still very much at the centre of his work, meditating on the fickle nature of human desire that keeps his characters from establishing trust in their relationships, but so too is he broadening his range as well. Smiles of a Summer Night is his first comedy, taking a light-hearted spin on A Midsummer Night’s Dream with its intricate web of affairs between aristocrats, while Sawdust and Tinsel turns a circus troupe into an existential metaphor for life’s cruel farce.

“We make art. You make artifice. The lowest of us would spit on the best of you. Why? You only risk your lives. We risk our pride.”
Mr. Sjuberg (Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953)

*Another one of Bergman’s trademark shot, this one of horizontal faces lying parallel to each other, making its first appearance in his light comedy Smiles of a Summer Night.*

Gunnar Fischer’s contributions as Bergman’s regular cinematographer during this period must be noted, contributing his eye for barren landscapes and deep focus imagery. Another Bergman trademark emerges for the first time in Smiles of a Summer Night with the parallel faces lying side-by-side, while his actors’ performances flourish even more under the intimate inspection of his close-ups. Bibi Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck, and Gunnar Björnstrand each get their time in the spotlight here, but it is Harriet Andersson who truly defines this period for Bergman as an actress, exerting a feminine sexuality and emotional depth that was far from common in the 1950s.

Harriet Andersson is one of Bergman’s first true collaborators, lighting up the screen in Summer with Monika. This is the film’s single strongest shot – the camera locks Andersson’s penetrating gaze in close-up, and tracks forward as the background lighting dims.

Philosophical Dramas (1957 – 1963)

Before 1957, no one saw a masterpiece like The Seventh Seal coming from Ingmar Bergman. To then follow that up with Wild Strawberries in the same year makes for an accomplishment rivalled by very few in film history – one must think of Josef von Sternberg dominating 1930 with both The Blue Angel and Morocco, or Francis Ford Coppola releasing both The Godfather Part II and The Conversation in 1974.

These two films also mark a new trajectory for Bergman, who was now staring down the philosophical questions that had previously only lingered beneath the surface. The silence of God would occupy his thoughts in The Seventh Seal, and would become a running theme throughout the rest of this period until The Silence in 1963, while Wild Strawberries draws us into the dreams and memories of an elderly professor looking back on a life of regrets. Those flashbacks that Bergman had been using for so long by this point manifest with nightmarish unease here, similarly setting him down a path of cinematic surrealism.

“Is it so awfully unthinkable to conceive of God with one’s senses? Why should He conceal Himself in a fog of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don’t believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living within me in a painful, humiliating way, though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why does He remain a treacherous reality of which I cannot rid myself? Do you hear me?”
Antonius Block (The Seventh Seal, 1957)

*Historical and metaphysical iconography in The Seventh Seal’s chess game with Death, becoming a symbol of fate and futility.*

Bergman separates Max von Sydow from the rest of the ensemble in this shot, relegating him to the background and pouring in light above his head. He is the only one here not looking straight at Death, who stands just behind the camera.

Man’s faith in God, or the lack thereof, is clearly a subject that torments Bergman in this period. It was already very clear that Bergman was an immensely talented writer of dialogue, but it wasn’t until this point that he started writing some of the greatest screenplays of all time. The Virgin Spring lays out a compelling allegory of Christ’s sacrifice, while Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence constitute his unofficial ‘Faith’ trilogy, each in conversation with each other on the matter. The resentment that his characters hold towards each other frequently spills over into poetic vitriol in these films, aimed at viciously tearing each other down, though frequently revealing more about the speaker than the target of their derision.

“I’m tired of your loving care. Your fussing. Your good advice. Your candlesticks and table runners. I’m fed up with your short-sightedness. Your clumsy hands. Your anxiousness. Your timid displays of affection. You force me to occupy myself with your physical condition. Your poor digestion. Your rashes. Your periods. Your frostbitten cheeks. Once and for all I have to escape this junkyard of idiotic trivialities. I’m sick and tired of it all, of everything to do with you.“
Pastor Tomas Ericsson (Winter Light, 1963)

Winter Light is one of Bergman’s greatest screenplays and character studies, examining the paradox of a doubting priest, but he still delivers these brilliant compositions of faces. Note the detail in placing Christ’s tortured face above Tomas’ here. He looks down at the priest, who is in turn distracted and looking at Jonas, who is similarly refusing to look at the person trying to reach him.

The parallel move away from Summer-based films as well couldn’t be harsher – frozen landscapes, rural churches, and foreign hotels completely isolate his characters in unwelcome environments, cutting them off from God and the rest of humanity. His home island of Fårö features for the first time among these settings too in Through a Glass Darkly, becoming its own metaphor of emotional and spiritual solitude.

Two of Bergman’s greatest actors join his troupe in this period around this time, with Max von Sydow making an enormous breakthrough as the disenchanted knight Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal, and Ingrid Thulin leaving a huge imprint on Wild Strawberries, Winter Light, and The Silence. So too does Sven Nykvist properly enter the picture here, taking the reigns from Gunnar Fischer and establishing a working relationship that would last for decades. He had done some very solid work before on Sawdust and Tinsel, but the severe minimalism of The Virgin Spring, Winter Light, and The Silence stands among some of Bergman’s finest visuals, delivering magnificent theological symbolism.

The Virgin Spring is one of Bergman’s most violent films, with the rape and murder of an innocent girl. These dead, slanted branches are constantly obstructing his frames here, fragmenting shots into pieces that emphasise a poignant brokenness.

Bergman’s home island of Fårö features for the first time in Through a Glass Darkly as a symbol of physical, emotional, and spiritual isolation. It would later also set the scene for Persona, Shame, Hour of the Wolf, and Scenes from a Marriage among others.

Experiments in Form (1964 – 1982)

With The Silence capping the end of his thematic trilogy in 1963, Ingmar Bergman claimed he was done questioning the existence of God, and new avenues began to open that allowed him greater artistic freedom – not that his shifting focus was immediately met with widespread acclaim. All These Women is a huge swing in visuals and writing that is about as far from Bergman’s typical style as possible, comically indulging in slapstick and satire that is ridden with flaws, yet still sticks the landing. It is also his first film shot in colour, which he wouldn’t return to again until The Passion of Anna in 1969. From then on though, it became the default in his filmmaking, seeing him quickly become a master of colour in Cries and Whispers and Fanny and Alexander – two of the most beautifully shot films in history.

No longer sticking purely to philosophical dramas, Bergman began exploring other genres as well. Hour of the Wolf sees him take command of psychological horror as an interrogation of mental illness, Shame witnesses a married couple emotionally ripped apart by war, and Scenes From a Marriage lays out an enormous marital epic that is viscerally uncomfortable in its realism. He had been examining the constraints of human relationships since his earliest days of filmmaking, but this is easily his purest distillation of these concerns, trapping us in confined rooms with a husband and wife on the verge of divorce.

“We’re emotional illiterates. We’ve been taught about anatomy and farming methods in Africa. We’ve learned mathematical formulas by heart. But we haven’t been taught a thing about our souls. We’re tremendously ignorant about what makes people tick.”
Johan (Scenes From a Marriage, 1973)

*Horizontal faces lying parallel to each other – another of Bergman’s trademark shots composed with stark austerity.*

It is also with his production of Scenes From a Marriage that he became the first director to effectively make the leap from film to television while maintaining his artistic integrity, recognising the potential of the miniseries format. This is something he would repeat again in Face to Face and Fanny and Alexander, even though all three would also receive theatrical cuts for international distribution. Many of his other films frequently hover around the 90-minute mark, and so for this reason it is particularly impressive that he was so successful in creating long-form cinema too.

It is Persona that stands tall as the centrepiece of this period, marking Bergman’s greatest cinematic experiment in what many have described as the Mount Everest of film analysis. It is obscure in its formal patterns and rich in its crisp visual style, studying the human face like a filter through which emotions may be either honestly expressed or deceitfully masked. The blending of identities previously explored in Wild Strawberries and The Silence also reaches a pinnacle here, and it is fascinating to see how Bergman would continue to use this device to specifically get to the root of his female characters, as we later see in Cries and Whispers. Usually if he was going to feature music in his films, it would be existing classical pieces, but it is fitting that both this and Hour of the Wolf were the two films he chose to involve avant-garde composer Lars Johan Werle, emphasising their existential terror through a pair of dissonant, experimental scores.

*Bergman first used this shot in 1949, and seventeen years later he perfects it in Persona.*

*Crisp, deep focus as Alma slides into Elisabet’s role in her relationship, patching up old wounds while Elisabet remains emotionally disconnected in the foreground.*

*An eerie spliced close-ups of both women’s faces, emphasising their similarities and revealing both as equal halves of a whole.*

*The more one studies this shot in Hour of the Wolf, the more disturbing it becomes, manifesting Johan’s demons as his neighbours.*

There is another unofficial trilogy which forms too between Hour of the Wolf, Shame, and The Passion of Anna, considering a trio of couples with artistic inclinations lost in spiritual crises. Quite significantly, this is where Liv Ullmann started working with Bergman, acting besides Max von Sydow in all three films. Later she would also follow Bergman to Hollywood when he made The Serpent’s Egg, his second English-language film after The Touch. Neither are major artistic achievements, but still demonstrate his willingness to keep moving outside his comfort zone.

Finally, Bergman’s surrealism began to settle on a series of recognisable traits during these years. Silent sequences of characters wandering empty hotels, manors, apartments, and houses turn these spaces into dreamy limbos, located somewhere within their uneasy subconscious. The sounds of ticking clocks often accompany these scenes too, implying the imminence of death even in these apparently timeless realms. The first time we witness this device may have been in The Silence, but he continues to draw it through Cries and Whispers, Face to Face, and Fanny and Alexander too, uncovering the psychological root of his characters’ fears and desires.

Characters wander apartments, houses, manors, and hotels in eerie, surreal silence. Here in Face to Face, Bergman leads one of them into a split screen manifesting two halves of a single mind like Persona.

A fantastical prologue to Fanny and Alexander that sets up Alexander, his imagination, and the huge, magnificent apartment owned by his grandmother, Helena. Drapes of green and gold hang over cased openings and windows, creating immaculate frames all through the interior space.

Television Specials

There are few filmmakers who have kept up as great a level of creative stamina across a large span of time as Ingmar Bergman, though in the last couple decades of his life even he began to grow tired, and the quality of his work declined. Despite Fanny and Alexander being intended as his last film before committing himself entirely to theatre, he did keep working on television projects. He had touched on this before in specials like From the Life of Marionettes, but from here it became his entire career. Unfortunately, most of these films have very little artistic merit, plainly revealing their limited budgets in their poor cinematography and uncharacteristically messy writing.

Two exceptions stand here. The first is After the Rehearsal, which is deeply in touch with Bergman’s love of theatre. Though he sets it entirely on a stage and thus compromises its cinematic power, his formal manipulations of time through dreams and flashbacks remain strong, slipping an ageing theatre director back through time to an old relationship.

Being set in a single location, After the Rehearsal is severely compromised in its cinematic power, but Bergman’s adoration of the theatre as an art form bleeds through in its central formal conceit.

The other exception is Saraband – the last film of Bergman’s entire career, and a fitting return to form. Though often described as a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, it is much more an observation of the imprint its aged divorcees have left on the younger generations now carrying their legacies. Bergman had contemplated the regrets of old age before, but this feels far more grounded in his firsthand experience than the surreal meditations of Wild Strawberries and Autumn Sonata, now finding peace in the act of introspective reminiscence and his longstanding adoration of classical music.

Many of his usual trademarks are present in Saraband, including savage dialogue viscerally thrown between wounded characters, but in the very final minutes there are no such acts of spiritual desecration to be found. With two of his greatest actors by his side, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, Bergman finally appreciates the pure bond between lovers, parents, children, and friends that transcends all other worldly distractions.

Four years later, Ingmar Bergman passed away in his sleep at his home on Fårö. The date was 30 July, 2007 – the same day as Michelangelo Antonioni’s passing. His influence as one of the all-time great directors and screenwriters continues to be felt in the work of virtually every filmmaker working today, from the severe aesthetic precision of Paweł Pawlikowski’s films Ida and Cold War, to Paul Schrader’s direct evocation of Winter Light in First Reformed.

*Bergman’s final film Saraband is a poetic return to form after decades of less-than-admirable filmmaking, recapturing the magic between Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson from Scenes from a Marriage.*

Director Archives

Year	Film	Grade
1946	It Rains on Our Love	R
1947	A Ship Bound for India	R
1948	Port of Call	R
1949	Thirst	R
1950	To Joy	R
1951	Summer Interlude	R/HR
1953	Summer with Monika	HR
1953	Sawdust and Tinsel	HR/MS
1954	A Lesson in Love	R
1955	Dreams	HR
1955	Smiles of a Summer Night	HR
1957	The Seventh Seal	MP
1957	Wild Strawberries	MS/MP
1958	The Magician	R/HR
1960	The Virgin Spring	MP
1961	Through a Glass Darkly	HR
1963	Winter Light	MP
1963	The Silence	MP
1964	All These Women	HR/MS
1966	Persona	MP
1968	Hour of the Wolf	MS
1968	Shame	MS
1969	The Passion of Anna	HR
1971	The Touch	R
1972	Cries and Whispers	MP
1973	Scenes from a Marriage	MS
1976	Face to Face	MS
1977	The Serpent’s Egg	R
1978	Autumn Sonata	MP
1980	From the Life of Marionettes	R
1982	Fanny and Alexander	MP
1984	After the Rehearsal	R
2003	Saraband	HR

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All Ingmar Bergman Reviews

The Creator (2023)

Gareth Edwards | 2hr 13min

One hundred years after America sent their troops to a war in Vietnam that they would suffer greatly for, another conflict unfolds in the futuristic Republic of New Asia, where artificially intelligent beings have taken refuge from the genocidal fury of the western world. Driven by humanity’s most basic fear of extinction and replacement, the United States has taken up arms against their synthetic inventions. Not only have they developed a giant superweapon called USS Nomad that sits up high in the sky, scans for simulants, and destroys them on sight, but they have also unleashed the full force of their highly advanced military upon the forests, mountains, and villages of New Asia where the survivors are being protected by locals.

Gareth Edwards is clearly not holding back his visual and narrative allusions to the Vietnam War, even referencing the specific iconography of films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon, and yet there is a freshness to The Creator which still finds new meaning in the historical conflict through contemporary questions of human identity. America’s dehumanisation of its enemies manifests in this allegory with brutal violence, as soldiers psychologically torture innocent civilians for information, flatten towns with giant tanks, and desecrate the bodies of dead simulants. With foes this inhuman, it is all too easy for Joshua to rationalise fighting for his country as an undercover agent – after all, can a non-human being even be dehumanised to begin with?

Still, it is a very thin line between those artificial simulants and their human New Asian allies, both being disregarded and slaughtered by Americans with barbaric indifference. Lending an even greater weight to this race of artificial humanoids is the faith that has become central to their hopes of survival, noted in the opening text that translates the Nepalese word “Nirmata” as “god-like creator”, and going on to frame this mysterious deity as an architect of AI technology and civilisation.

Therein lies the grand theological concerns of The Creator. Much like Jake Sully’s conversion in Avatar, Joshua begins to see the value these beings place on life beyond mere survival, and the purpose they inherently hold by nature of their own creation. Both organic and synthetic races are inextricably bound – if their lives are worthless, then so too are ours.

As such, this narrative which starts out much like a Blade Runner-type story of a man hunting down artificial humanoids begins to take a direction far more in line with Children of Men, right down to the Messianic icon at its centre. Having learnt of a new weapon developed by Nirmata, Joshua sets out to destroy the device before it can obliterate the USS Nomad, only to discover its devastatingly sympathetic form – a young child simulant called Alpha-O, or more affectionately nicknamed Alphie. It is certainly no coincidence that she activates her power to control technology by holding her hands in a prayer-like position, as if calling on the power of her deity to perform miracles. She is the prophesied saviour of the world, merging the best of both humanity and artificial intelligence, and incidentally turning Joshua into a Joseph-like father figure tasked with ensuring the fulfilment of her destiny.

It stands to reason then that in place of Mother Mary, Joshua’s late wife Maya is the guiding maternal presence, becoming a significant figure in this story despite being largely absent. The promise from Josh’s superiors that she is still alive is all the motivation he needs to join their mission, but it also eventually pushes him to go rogue and whisk Alphie away, leading them from one action set piece to the next in hope of recovering his lost love.

In this stimulating combination of philosophical concerns and largescale science-fiction filmmaking, the names of two more giant directors easily spring to mind. Edwards’ accomplished production design, visual effects, and crisp cinematography clearly follow in the footsteps of Denis Villeneuve, and his consideration of relations between distinct lifeforms and political factions particularly echo Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune. No doubt this visual prowess can be largely attributed though to Edwards’ use of Dune cinematographer Greig Fraser, capturing a vision of Earth’s future that is rich with cultural detail as helicopter shots circle temples atop Himalayan mountains, and gaze in awe at America’s colossal superweapon sitting up high in the atmosphere.

The other key influence here is virtually inescapable in this era of blockbuster filmmaking, yet remains especially relevant with Edwards’ sharp parallel editing and Hans Zimmer’s majestic blend of orchestral and electronics instruments. The Creator may not touch the magnificent heights of most Christopher Nolan films with its occasional meandering, and yet Edwards’ choice of artistic inspiration is welcome nonetheless, posing a more cerebral alternative to Hollywood’s production line of mindless entertainment without compromising on cinematic spectacle.

As fresh and modern as Edwards is with his epic storytelling, this is a narrative rooted deeply in human culture and history, as Joshua’s military commander even points out parallels to the Homo sapiens’ archaic conflict with Neanderthals which saw the more advanced species come out on top. Despite the fact that these simulants are programmed to desire nothing more than a global, cross-species harmony, humans are nonetheless driven by their own paranoid survival instinct. If they are to be killed off in some catastrophe, it will not be from any threat posed by their inventions, but from their own insecurity and fear of what they themselves have done.

The generational conflict between creators and their creations that Edwards writes into the subtext here makes the surrogate father-daughter relationship at the film’s centre all the sweeter. Through the love that Joshua and Alphie slowly develop for each other on their quest to save simulants from extinction, the paternal figure can relinquish his grasp on an advancing world, and the child is given the tools to ensure a prosperous future on Earth. It may not even matter whether this grand purpose is passed down from a divine deity or a mortal parent. In the eyes of those children eternally bound in loving gratitude to their creators, both are one and the same.

The Creator is currently playing in theatres.

Saraband (2003)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 47min

Though often described as a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, Saraband is not so much an interrogation of that famous relationship which saw divorce rates rise across Sweden as it is an observation of the imprint it has left on those younger generations left to carry its legacy. There are a couple of fresh faces present here in Börje Ahlstedt and Julia Dufvenius, while for Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson this film marks the end of an era. Not only is it their final collaboration with Ingmar Bergman, but for the celebrated Swedish director it is also his last work before he passed away in 2007, and a notable return to form after many years of creating less-than-admirable television movies.

Saraband may not be the first time he has contemplated regrets of old age, though compared to the pensive meditations of Wild Strawberries and Autumn Sonata, this screenplay is far more grounded in Bergman’s firsthand experience of the matter. Save for a few minor dreams and flashbacks, these narrative diversions are excised altogether, and instead this story of reunited ex-lovers is delivered through a series of ten chapters not unlike the six parts of Scenes from a Marriage.

*Liv Ullmann breaks the fourth wall in the prologue and epilogue, pouring over a table of photographs capturing pieces of Marianne’s life.*

The result is a film that takes the form of a written memoir, framing an aged Marianne as our first-person narrator who pours over photographs of her life, and whose direct addresses to the camera bookend the narrative in a prologue and epilogue. Her absence from so many chapters is not an oversight on Bergman’s part. Each scene in this chamber drama is purposefully written as a two-hander, crafting rich dynamics from all the possible pairings between our four central characters – Marianne, Johan, his estranged son Henrik, and his freedom-seeking granddaughter Karin. Among them, Marianne appears to be the only one who is most content with herself, having put her psychological demons evident in Scenes from a Marriage to rest many years ago. She does not seek to become an active part of Johan’s family drama, but instead she carries a largely observational and counselling presence, offering warm wisdom to those willing to listen.

*Warm burgundy colours in the costume and production design when Marianne and Johan reunite after many years. Saraband’s main drama is not about them – they are at peace with their divorce.*

Contrary to what one might have assumed from Bergman’s last few projects, he has not lost his touch with these intimate close-ups. Neither has he apparently lost his penchant for disturbing relationship dynamics with Henrik’s sexual abuse of his daughter.

For an elderly Johan staring down the end of his life, Marianne’s impromptu visit couldn’t be timelier in helping him make peace with his own psychological troubles. It is somewhat surprising how little animosity there is between them, especially given how firmly he holds onto old grudges against Henrik which consequently left a broken family in their wake. In the absence of his alienated father and deceased wife Anna, Henrik has made the unsettling decision to attempt filling every role in his daughter’s life, thus not only positioning himself as her cello tutor, but also, quite disturbingly, as her lover.

*It’s not quite The Seventh Seal or Winter Light, but there is an austere beauty to Bergman’s wide shots and tangential contemplations of religion.*

The messiness of human entanglements has long been at the centre of Bergman’s writing, and sixty years after his early melodramas in the 1940s he is quite astonishingly still finding new angles on the jealousy and insecurity that hides within our most intimate relationships. Much like Johan and Marianne’s arguments in Scenes from a Marriage, Henrik’s seething expressions of acrid resentment reveal far more about his own spiteful soul than the target of his derision, taking perverted pleasure in the suffering he mentally projects on his father.

“I hate him in all possible dimensions of the word. I hate him so much, I would like to see him die from a horrible illness. I’d visit him every day, just to witness his torment.”

Ironically enough, it isn’t too hard to imagine Karin a few years down the track holding similar feelings towards the man who speaks these words. Bergman struggles to develop a strong visual aesthetic in Saraband, though the strained relationship between Henrik and Karin becomes abundantly clear in his trademark composition of their parallel faces lying horizontal in bed, as he desperately begs her to audition for a nearby music conservatory so she can stay close by his side.

*That horizontal blocking of parallel faces appearing for the last time in Bergman’s filmography, and this time he hangs on the shot as the camera drifts between close-ups of both.*

It isn’t until after speaking with Johan and Marianne individually that Karin finds the courage to set out on a new path, following her friend to Hamburg to perform in an orchestra, and thereby rebelling against her father’s isolative preference for her to pursue a career as a solo cellist. There is a beautiful synchronicity between this arc and the accompanying music too, ringing out the lonely lament of a single cello throughout much of the film, before growing into a full orchestral symphony as Karin envisions a future of her own choosing. Bergman is not a director who typically makes extensive use of film scores, though certainly his love of classical music has persisted through his work ever since 1950’s To Joy, elegantly expressing his characters’ deepest yearnings.

*One of the very few breaks from reality in Saraband, escaping into this white void in Karin’s mind as she plays the cello, the whole world opening up to her.*

Perhaps the most profound of all these longings though is for a figure who is almost completely absent in Saraband, represented only in the framed photographs that adorn Johan, Henrik, Karin, and even Marianne’s personal spaces. The grace that Anna brought to their lives is sorely missed, and it is only thanks to her that Karin ever really knew what it meant to feel the kind, unselfish love of a parent. Through Anna, Henrik was made fully aware of his failings as a father, and perhaps he might have even been able to fix them had she not passed away. As it is though, all she was able to leave him was a letter written shortly before her death, professing her love yet warning him against further wounding his relationship with Karin.

Anna is the fifth primary character, and yet is physically absent from Saraband having passed away long ago. She continues to leave a mark on those left behind though, each of them keeping a framed black-and-white photo close in their homes.

Unlike virtually everyone else in this ensemble though, Henrik cannot simply let go of those who are ready to move on without him. His failed suicide attempt after Karin’s departure for Berlin is the bleak conclusion to his story, though Bergman decides to sit a little longer with those two characters whose richness and authenticity secured his place in popular culture thirty years prior. As an anxious Johan finds comfort in Marianne’s arms after a night of restless sleep, the two bear their naked bodies to each other for the first time in decades, finding an intimate, humbling honesty that cuts through the existential terror of old age. In the last moments of Bergman’s last film, there are no vicious verbal attacks or extreme acts of spiritual desecration to be found. Much like Marianne, Bergman too finds peace in the act of introspective reminiscence, allowing him to finally appreciate the pure bond between lovers, parents, and children that transcends all other worldly distractions.

*A raw, naked union of bodies under the sheets, these ex-lovers finding comfort in each other’s arms and accepting old age together.*

Saraband is currently available on DVD from Amazon.

After the Rehearsal (1984)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 20min

The theatre stage is not just a canvas for director Henrik Vogler to mount his eloquent artistic expressions of pain and desire. After each rehearsal, when it has emptied of cast and crew, it also becomes place of deep meditation, where the stories and lives that have passed across its floorboards settle inside him.

“All the emotions, real and make believe, all the laughter, rage, passion, and who knows what else. It’s all still here… enclosed… living its secret, uninterrupted life. I hear them sometimes. Often. Sometimes I think I can hear them. Demons, angels, ghosts… ordinary people… intently going about their lives. Closed off. Secretive. Sometimes we speak to each other, but just in passing.”

The line between life and fiction fades away, lifting him outside time itself until he too becomes an actor in his own fantasy. Not that he would accept that label – Henrik is adamant that he does not participate in the drama, but merely gives it form. His rehearsals are operations, he claims, “where self-discipline, cleanliness, light, and stillness prevail.”

Ingmar Bergman couldn’t disagree more. With After the Rehearsal playing out entirely on Henrik’s stage, everything that unfolds here effectively becomes a play in itself, frequently setting wide shots far back in the audience to frame the theatre director as a character in his own drama. Like his actors, he too is subject to the chaos of art that exposes his true self, letting his internal voiceovers disdainfully drown out his conversations with the two women who approach him mid-reflection.

The first of these is Anna, the lead in his production of A Dream Play. Her search for a missing bracelet is evidently little more than an excuse to talk with her director, seeking one-on-one guidance for her character of Agnes, the daughter of a Vedic god who has descended to Earth and now witnesses the suffering of its mortals. On top of this, there may also be romantic intentions here too – the same kind that Henrik has shared with so many other actresses before her, including her own late mother, Rakel. Anna’s memories of the woman are bitter, recalling in a pained monologue the way she fought with her father and pushed her into a theatre career, though it is Henrik’s recollection of Rakel which proves to be even stronger.

Just as Anna reaches the peak of her resentful nostalgia, reality shifts, freezing her in a single moment of time while Rakel approaches Henrik with a smile. For the first time in Bergman’s career, we are finally afforded the opportunity to watch Erland Josephson and Ingrid Thulin play off each other – one as a prideful director, the other as a volatile actress, and both caught up in a passion that swings between extremes. “Distance. Indifference. Weariness. Fear. Impotence. Impotent rage. Distance,” his internal voice mutters, convincing himself of his own apathy towards her, though at the same time her ability to cut through his sensitive ego is apparent.

“Theatre is shit, filth, and lechery. Turmoil, tangles, and trouble. I don’t believe for a second your theory about purity. It’s suspect, typical of you.”

Henrik speaks of his desire for order and precision, and yet his affection for Rakel tells a different story, seeing her embody all the chaotic emotions that inevitably manifest in his artistic expression. Meanwhile, a frozen Anna continues to burn the imprint of her red outfit into the faded blue couch between them, becoming an enduring reminder of the impact Rakel has left on his life long after her passing.

These memories and distortions barely seem out of place within Henrik’s mind, especially as the illusion of real time persists, yet Bergman’s understated surrealism weaves its way through in subtle ways. In the corner, he sees a younger version of himself hiding under a thunder sheet, while actresses playing Anna as an adult and pre-adolescent appear to swap places without so much as a cut. Only in the theatre could Henrik create a bubble of nostalgia so cut off from the outside world that it conforms to the whims of his own subjective mind, spurring a profound self-reflection on his art and relationships.

Even in the objective reality of the setting though, this stage is filled with artefacts of past plays, each one with some story behind it that Henrik could talk at length about. This is not an exceedingly beautiful film, particularly given its confinement to a single location, but Bergman blocks his actors around its stained mirrors, rustic furniture, and lighting rigs with delicate care, and especially builds his visual storytelling to a peak following our return to Henrik’s reality in the final act.

It is here as After the Rehearsal winds to a close that Anna’s attempt to make their relationship more intimate is met with a gentle rejection. “If I were ten years younger!” Henrik softly laughs, accepting the maturity that has come with age, and perhaps a little bit from his relationship with her mother. With his arm around her shoulder though, they walk among painted backdrops and discuss what could have been, narrating all the ups and downs of their hypothetical future together. Against the image of a city street, their romance becomes argumentative, and though they try to salvage it from jealousy and anger, their breakup is inevitable. Still, they will remain on amicable terms, Henrik muses, before breaking the immersion.

“That’s how it would be.”

This is clearly the work of an older director not just looking back on his career, but his relationships as well. It is no secret after all that Bergman conducted multiple affairs with his leading ladies over the years. There is some regret and self-loathing mixed in with this, but also a great appreciation for those women who have softened his edges and offered him inspiration. After the Rehearsal may mark the beginning of a final chapter for Bergman that never saw him reach the heights of Persona or Fanny and Alexander, but even as the scale of his ambition decreases, there is a new humility and maturity here taking eloquent form.

After the Rehearsal is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

Duelle (1976)

Jacques Rivette | 2hr 1min

It wouldn’t be hard to believe that each location in Duelle is interconnected within some giant, labyrinthine complex, entangling its human characters in an enigmatic web of manipulation and deceit set up by two warring goddesses. Besides their archetypal representations as opposing forces of nature, the Queen of the Sun and the Queen of the Night are not so different in their common goal – to claim the mystical Fairy Godmother diamond as their own, and use its power to spend their remaining lives on Earth as mortals. The premise of this high-concept fantasy wouldn’t seem out of place in ancient mythology, but given Jacques Rivette’s roots in the French New Wave one should not expect such a clean narrative. Duelle is as much an obscure spin on a film noir mystery as it is a whimsical fairy tale of extraordinary stakes, transforming 1970s Paris into a battleground for its quarrelling entities.

Rather than any hardboiled Philip Marlowe character tracing down loose threads though, Rivette situates Lucie the hotel night porter as our amateur detective, linking up with taxi dancer Elsa and her brother Pierrot to investigate the conspiracy of the mysterious Lord Christie and his priceless gem. With this gender subversion, Rivette adds another fascinating dimension to this ensemble – any of our four leading women could slot in as Duelle’s manipulative femme fatale. Goddesses Viva and Leni are both fully aware of their genderfluid power too, playing to their feminine sexuality when seducing Pierrot, and dressing in traditionally male, sharp-cut suits as they flirt with Lucie and Elsa.

*The two fantasy Queens play with the gender presentation around men and women, subverting the noir archetypes they represent.*

The tension generated by these interactions is surreal in their obscure subtext and mannered performances, lulling us into a sleepy, poetic reverie. The cumulative effect is both intoxicating and distancing, letting us feel as if we are looking through a window into an alternate world that escapes the rules of our reality, rendering us powerless. Elsa cryptically lyricises as much in one crucial metaphor too.

“Dreams are the aquarium of the night.”

When Rivette visually manifests this imagery as the backdrop to a meeting between Leni and her ill-fated victim, a murky ethereality takes hold. Fish and turtles lazily drift through the water behind them, which diffuses a green light into the surrounding atmosphere, illuminating gods and mortals alike in an unearthly glow. As the scene progresses, Rivette’s camera continues to circle the aquarium in slow movements, as if similarly moving through a mystical, underwater realm that refuses to release those under its time-slowing spell.

*Sea creatures swim lazily through the green aquarium backdrop of one meeting between characters, projecting an otherworldly atmosphere in the dreamy visuals.*

Rivette has this strange talent for world building without constructed sets, turning urban locations into fantasy settings. The roots are clearly in noir, though it is also comparable to the way Jean-Luc Godard transformed the streets of Paris into a futuristic city in Alphaville.

*Enigmatic character interactions unfold through gambling clubs and greenhouses, with Rivette always providing a strong sense of setting to inform his surreal atmosphere.*

It is a remarkable command over cinematic visuals that extends throughout the rest of Duelle too, made even more impressive by the fact that Rivette is largely shooting on location across Paris’ urban landscapes, imbuing his dark fantasy with a seemingly paradoxical authenticity. Through racetrack centres, underground stations, shady hotels, and lush greenhouses, his camera floats with unhurried ease, basking in the verdant colour palette that he weaves through his lighting and production design. Whenever the opaque plotting escapes us, it is all too easy to fall into the mesmerising atmosphere instead, much like the crowds who move through settings as hypnotised zombies. Ignorance has evidently trapped the world in a state of monotonous routine. Around baccarat tables, gamblers silently rake in chips and smoke cigarettes, while in the background of a burgundy-coloured club, couples sway in synchronicity to the sound of a jazz pianist.

*Green in the lighting fixtures of bridges, hotel corridors, and flooding nocturnal streets – Rivette is deliberate and self-assured with his uniform colour palette.*

How curious it is too that this musician seems to be virtually omnipresent throughout Duelle, appearing in private hotel rooms, bars, and dance studios alike to accompany scenes with his diegetic improvisations. He is not so much a silent witness as he is a ghostly embodiment of Rivette’s lucid dream, revealing the strings behind the scenes that shape our psychological experience, yet never intruding so much as to break our total immersion.

It is a fine line that Rivette is walking on virtually every level of his filmmaking here, simultaneously inviting us into his phantasmagorical mystery while keeping us at just enough of a distance to recognise its deceit. With one foot in reality, we see gods take human form and walk through familiar streets, and with the other foot in a beautifully unstable dreamscape, we see humans as warped refractions of themselves. Mirrors populate his mise-en-scène at every turn, subtly hinting at a world existing beneath our own in tremendously layered compositions, and it is only when Pierrot shatters one that the illusion breaks entirely. Suddenly, the secret identities of both goddesses are stripped away, and seeing each other for who they are, they challenge each other to one last duel.

*Mirrors and illusions woven through Duelle’s mise-en-scène and blocking, until both are shattered.*

*Dual archetypes at war with each other in Rivette’s surreal noir fantasy – the Queens of day and night locked in eternal battle.*

Parallel to this escalating conflict, Rivette laces a series of formal cutaways that build to a subtle crescendo, keeping the night sky’s waxing moon in our sights. For as long as it is partially impeded by darkness, the astrological powers holding the world in its spellbinding thrall cannot reach their maximum potential. Only when Lucie vanquishes Viva with the diamond does it shine its full, bright light down upon the Queen of the Sun’s defeat, before a brightening dawn illuminates the Queen of the Night’s subsequent downfall. Harmony is finally found in Duelle’s whimsical, elegiac poetry, simultaneously restoring the cosmic cycles of creation, and keeping intact the intransient magic that simmers beneath the most inconspicuous corners of modern society.

*Formal repetition in the waxing and waning moon, connecting the small human characters back to the astrological powers governing their lives.*

Duelle is currently streaming on Mubi.

Umberto D. (1952)

Vittorio de Sica | 1hr 29min

Even after pensioner Umberto D. Ferrari is threatened with eviction, kicked out of his hospital bed, and forced through the trials of losing and recovering his dog, it is surprising to find that he still has the pride to reject the smallest help from strangers. As he stands outside the Pantheon, he sheepishly wrestles with the prospect of begging, before thrusting his hand out at a passerby. The shame is almost instant – as soon as the man reaches into his pocket to take out a few bills, Umberto averts his gaze and flips his hand over, pretending to test for rain.

It is hardly his fault that he has fallen on such hard times, especially given the bleak social conditions of post-war Rome that have sent masses into poverty. Still, the disgrace of his own inadequacy is harrowing. This should be the time of his life that he is enjoying retirement, and this grand city of immensely rich history and culture should be the perfect place for that. The paradox of its beautiful, ancient architecture coexisting alongside this elderly man’s struggles in Umberto D. though is united under a very simple yet powerful visual conceit within Vittorio de Sica’s mise-en-scène. Rome’s urban landscape of stone columns and vast domes may be majestic in its imposing visual backdrops, but there is little consolation to be found in its cold, harsh discomfort.

*Poverty and shame as Umberto decides against begging at the last second, and the Pantheon strikes an imposing backdrop to it all.*

Italian neorealism was definitively on the way out by 1952, and by this point de Sica had already directed what is arguably the movement’s most seminal film, Bicycle Thieves, yet there is nothing in Umberto D. to suggest that his talents had dwindled. Its black-and-white location shooting through Rome’s streets and plazas is as robust as ever, imprinting Carlo Battisti’s sorrowful face in low angles against apartment buildings, and shrinking his feeble stature beneath towering obelisks. Equally crucial to de Sica’s imagery as well is the constant bustle of everyday life surrounding Umberto – in fact, it is hard to find any public space that isn’t crawling with workers on scaffolding, children playing games, or trains speeding through backgrounds.

A cornerstone of Italian neorealism in the use of authentic architecture and the naturalistic blocking, supported a great deal by the crisp depth of field – the harsh stone structures offer little comfort in this ancient city.

De Sica is all too aware of the irony in Umberto’s emotional isolation here, given the fervent activity and density of the city around him. There is little empathy to be found anywhere along the social ladder, from the unseen government bureaucrats with their scant welfare payments, to Umberto’s own landlady who renovates his apartment without warning. Her plan is to make one giant living room in the building, but right now the giant hole in the bedroom wall is nothing more than a visual manifestation of his crumbling life, and a crude opening through which de Sica’s camera sensitively frames his loss of dignity.

*Umberto is a prisoner in his own home, claustrophobically framed in its hallways and through the hole in his wall.*

At the very least, there is some comfort to be found in Umberto’s few companions. Just as Maria, the landlady’s maid, helps his situation as much as she can from her limited position, he too is determined to find the father of her unborn baby so that she may have some financial support. Both she and Umberto may belong to entirely different generations, but there is no competition between his encroaching homelessness and her teenage pregnancy. Instead, this elderly man and young woman share a common empathy for each other’s troubles, generating their own warmth in an otherwise hostile environment.

Even with such high narrative stakes though, the soul-crushing mundanity of day-to-day survival bleeds through in Umberto D. De Sica plays it out with an understated sincerity, recognising that everyday responsibilities do not disappear simply because one’s welfare is in peril, and even spends four minutes studying Maria’s internalised pain as she makes herself coffee. It takes her three strikes of the match before it lights up, though before she gets it to the gas stove, it snuffs out. Two more strikes do the job, and with the fire now burning she stops by the window to gaze outside at the dilapidated apartment buildings neighbouring her own. Over at the sink, she takes a quick drink from the tap before filling the kettle and placing it on the stove. She pauses, her hands reaching down to caress her belly, and then as she sits down to grind the coffee beans, we register the streak of single tear on her cheek. The moment the doorbell rings though, she is snapped out of her poignant reverie, and quickly rubs her face clean before answering.

*Several minutes are spent watching Maria make coffee, as de Sica lets the subdued emotion naturally rise to the surface – a huge reaction against the heightened Hollywood movies of the era.*

In an era that saw Hollywood blowing emotions such as these up into enormous Technicolor musicals and melodramas, de Sica was expressing them as uncomfortable interruptions to his characters’ efforts to stay alive. It is clear to see how much texture these tiny formal details bring to his characters, layering their journeys with struggles beyond their primary objectives. It is only incidental that Umberto’s apartment is infested with ants and that his sleep is constantly disturbed by loud noises from outside the building, as these facts of life sink into the background along with the threat of any future war. After all, there are only so many things one man can invest in emotionally before letting everything else fall by the wayside.

*Carlo Battisti’s face is a vessel of empathy for the audience, bearing the weight of multiple burdens as he lays down to a restless sleep.*

Even with all these pressures falling on Umberto’s shoulders though, it tells us a lot about his character that he doesn’t even think twice to prioritise finding his dog the moment he learns of his escape. Where children were typically used in other neorealist films as emblems of innocence, here Flike represents everything pure and good that the world has to lose should it continue along its path to total degradation. Umberto’s relief upon finding his best friend at the pound is immense, though the imagery there is harsh. With dogs being hoisted up their necks, kept in small cages, and shoved into incinerators, de Sica effectively draws bleak visual parallels to the concentration camps of the Holocaust. The aftershocks of World War II are evidently still reverberating across Europe.

*Visceral imagery of concentration camps at the dog pound, never quite letting go of Europe’s recent history.*

As long as goodness exists in a world burdened by historical trauma though, there is also hope for Umberto. No matter how hard he tries to hand his dog off to someone else, he simply will not leave his side, right up until he finds himself trapped in his master’s grip in the path of an oncoming train. Just as Umberto rescued Flike from certain death at the pound, Flike similarly saves him from suicide here, squirming out of his arms and leading him off the tracks.

The trust between man and animal has been momentarily broken, but as a result the roles have been swapped. It is now Umberto chasing after his disillusioned dog, marking the opposite dynamic of what we witnessed just a few minutes earlier. It takes genuine remorse and humility to restore that connection, but the fact that it can be mended at all speaks to the uniqueness of this relationship that responds to betrayal with compassionate mercy – a quality that is scarce to be found elsewhere in this amoral environment. While the rest of the world crumbles in Umberto D., de Sica emphasises the crucial role that our humanity plays in keeping us alive, distilling this warm, poignant sentiment down to a lonely man and his dog playing side by side in his very last shot.

*A stunning final frame with the low horizon, towering trees, and Umberto happily disappearing into the background with Flike.*

Umberto D. is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Ingmar Bergman | 4 episodes (57min – 1hr 32min) or 3hr 8min (theatrical cut)

There is a whimsical horror threaded through Fanny and Alexander that only its ten-year-old protagonist has the open-minded curiosity to confront. He gazes in wonder at his toy paper theatre illuminated by nine flickering candles, before wandering around an exquisitely cluttered apartment draped in red, green, and gold fabrics, like a lonely child lost in a world of endless possibilities. He calls out to his family’s maids, but no one replies. The clock chimes three, a set of cherubs rotate on a music box, and a half-nude marble statue in the corner slowly begins to dance. Suddenly, a soft scraping noise emerges beneath the eerie melody, and we catch a glimpse of a scythe being dragged across the carpet. The grim reaper has arrived, but not for young Alexander. Though this magical realist prologue might be the most undiluted manifestation of his vivid imagination, the heavy presence of death underlies all five hours of this Gothic family drama set in 1900s Sweden, marking his childhood with both merciless damnation and divine salvation.

A fantastical prologue setting up Alexander, his imagination, and the huge, magnificent apartment of his grandmother, Helena. Drapes of green and gold hang over cased openings and windows, creating immaculate frames all through the interior space.

In the haunted Christmastime setting of Fanny and Alexander’s opening, an air of Dickensian fantasy settles over the extended Ekdahl family, revelling in the warm festivities of their annual traditions. Religious celebrations and commemorations form the basis of these gatherings, rotating through the generational cycles of life in funerals, weddings, and christenings. Accompanying these occasions are large meals spread across expansive dining tables, though none are so magnificent as the spread on Christmas Eve night which dominates the first act of the film.

Here, Ingmar Bergman delights in splendidly designed sets of vivid crimson hues, weaved all through the patterned wallpaper, velvet curtains, and holiday decorations illuminated by the golden light of chandeliers and oil lamps. With such profuse warmth commanding the mise-en-scène, there are abundant opportunities to embellish it with small flourishes of emerald-green, popping out in festive wreaths, holly, and indoor plants that snugly crowd out the foreground of his shots.

One of Bergman’s finest achievements in production design, dotting his rooms with candles and festive decor, and filling them out with red, green, and gold hues in stunning arrangements. These shots are cluttered but cosy, immersing us into 1900s Sweden.

Matching Bergman’s rich use of colour is his impeccable blocking of a large ensemble, defining the status and identity of each character by their position within immaculately staged shots of family unity around overflowing dining tables and across plush lounges. For all the misgivings and arguments that arise within the theatre-loving Ekdahl family, there is no doubting the intimacy between them as they gather in the vast, splendid apartment of their widowed matriarch, Helena.

*Warmth and unity in Bergman’s blocking during the first act over Christmas Eve, bringing the entire extended Ekdahl family together within gorgeously composed frames.*

*A noticeable shift in the staging following the death of Oskar – reserved distance between each family member, each relegated to their own position and pose.*

It is a lengthy setup which Bergman conducts here, insulating us in these family celebrations like a warm, protective barrier from the freezing snow that blankets the village outside. Within its open living areas, we witness their artistic passion emerge in scenes of poetry recitations and musical performances late into the night, each becoming extensions of the plays they perform for the local community. Between the elegantly draped frames connecting each room as well, Bergman stages them like actors within proscenium arches, turning the apartment into its own theatre brimming with enormous personalities. Even greater depths are revealed behind closed doors, bringing a delicate texture to the family’s joys and troubles – Alexander’s uncle, Adolf Gustav, is a cheerful womaniser with a fragile ego, and Carl Ekdahl possesses significant contempt towards his German wife.

Bergman transforms the Ekdahl family home into a theatre of sorts, with the drapes framing its key players in a proscenium arch – remarkable formal mirroring between these scenes and those sets in actual theatres.

It isn’t hard to see where Alexander fits in here with his elaborate tall tales and instinct to escape into fiction when reality grows too harsh. Right from the film’s first frame of the young child peering into his toy paper theatre, there is a robust formal mirroring between the Ekdahls and their art, manifesting with levity in their lively Christmas festivities, and tragedy in the Hamlet-adjacent death of Alexander’s father, Oskar. It is fitting too that he first collapses during a rehearsal of the play, while he is performing the part of Hamlet’s deceased father. “I could play the ghost now really well,” he jokes on his deathbed, leaving his wife to remarry the cruel Bishop Edvard who presides over his funeral – a truly compelling stand-in for Hamlet’s treacherous uncle Claudius if there ever was one.

*Even outside the scope of family homes, Bergman finds a bright but chilly beauty in the frozen streets of Sweden, even while he lights up his interiors with a blazing warmth.*

The narrative that follows is heavily Shakespearean in both structure and characterisation, though there is also a touch of dreamy self-awareness as Bergman considers the multitude of stories woven into the fabric of his art. “We are surrounded by many realities, one on top of the other,” Alexander learns as he takes refuge within a curiosity shop of puppets, and indeed he seems to possess an imagination that can penetrate each of its metaphysical layers. When the voice of God speaks to him from a dark cabinet, he is filled with a great existential terror and total belief in its veracity, right up until he sees its true form – just another puppet, propping up the artifice of Christian piety.

In this consideration of organised religion as a hollow construct, Fanny and Alexander becomes an act of catharsis for Bergman who, in playing to these archetypes of corruption and innocence, reflects large portions of his own childhood. The fond memories of a flawed but welcoming family exist in stark contrast to the oppressive dynamic that pervades the bishop’s bare, colourless home, and caught between the two is the overly active imagination of a boy who struggles to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

*The curiosity shop of puppets once again turns theatre and art into a sanctuary for Alexander, and doubles as a metaphor for the many stories that make up the lives and worlds beyond our own.*

As such, there is also a distinct fairy tale quality that takes hold of Fanny and Alexander, accompanying the introduction of the wicked stepfather with ghosts and demons directly inspired by those religious tales which the children are raised on. Being deprived of a supportive father figure himself, Bergman carries great empathy for Alexander, understanding his immaturity and naivety as a natural stage in his own creative development.

Perhaps it is this lack of emotional inhibition which grants the young boy the means to deal with his grief, letting him lash out in ways which, while not entirely polite, are honest to his thoughts and feelings. In one evocative scene after he hears his mother’s guttural cry erupt from somewhere in their grandmother’s apartment, he creeps out of bed with his sister Fanny to peer through the crack of a door, where they see her wailing in private over her husband’s cold body. Unlike Alexander’s coping mechanisms that are freely expressed out into the world, the overwhelming feelings of adults must be repressed to those small, remote corners where no one else can see. This is a lesson that the bishop beats into him even harder with a “strong and harsh love,” reframing Alexander’s innocent efforts to understand the world as sinister transgressions that will damn him to hell.

*A thin frame caught in the crack of a door, as the children get out of bed to see their deceased father and their wailing mother pacing back and forth.*

With a shift in location to the bishop’s house, the splendid drapes and decor of the Ekdahl home is replaced with austere, colourless walls and quiet, unwelcoming dinners. Not a trace of eye contact to be found in these family gatherings.

The move from Helena’s vibrant, festive home of expressionistic décor to the stark white halls of the bishop’s Spartan house lands with a quiet dread, and with it comes a shift in Bergman’s blocking. Gone are the large family gathering of characters arranged in relaxed formations across plush couches and dining halls. These rooms are made of stone and wood, unembellished and projecting the bishop’s cold hostility through every communal space. The housemaid, Justina, effectively becomes a scary old witch in this household as well, using the children’s wild imaginations against them through her unsettling cautionary tales. Harriet Andersson refreshingly proves her range here in playing the total opposite of what she represented in her earliest collaborations with Bergman – tedium and severity, in place of youth and beauty.

Harriet Andersson is superbly cast as Justina the housemaid – she is thin, severe, and unsmiling, representing the inverse of the young, beautiful protagonists she played in Bergman’s earlier films.

The grip that both villains hold over our protagonists is suffocating. The bishop’s demand that Emilie and her children lose all their old possessions as if “newly born” is delivered with a faint chill, forcing them to conform to his pious standard of sparse minimalism, and kicking off a long line of attempts to rewrite their identities. Bergman captures this devastating isolation wreaked upon the young siblings with harsh, angular frames, gazing out the windows of their depressing bedroom, and crumpled on the attic’s grey, dusty floor beneath a fallen crucifix, as if slain by a domineering force of spiritual corruption.

*Bergman shoots the bishop’s house like a prison with his desolate compositions, trapping Fanny and Alexander in these restrictive frames.*

*A fallen crucifix and the crumpled body of Alexander, banished to the attic for his disobedience, and slain by a domineering force of spiritual corruption.*

His immaculate staging of his actors goes beyond wide shots too though, as he particularly focuses on the thoughtful arrangements of their faces to understand their joys and frustrations on a psychological, intimate level. As Oskar lays on his deathbed with his face turned to the side, Emilie’s profile leans up against his cheek in pensive mourning, simultaneously revealing both the intimacy of their final days of marriage and the tension that is pulling them apart. In contrast, a later shot at the bishop’s house which frames Fanny, Alexander, and Emilie lying on their sides in bed captures them all looking towards the camera, united in their melancholy. With each face slightly obscuring the one behind it, Emilie is set up at the back as the quiet protector of her children, shielding them from the bishop who stands alone and unfocused in the background.

*Bergman shoots arrangements of faces that uncovers the subtlest emotions, expressing melancholy longing, maternal protectiveness, and a ghostly terror.*

Jan Malmsjö brings a sadistic venom to this role, though he takes care to only reveal his villainy bit by bit. His first handling of Alexander’s lies is stern but relatively fair, keeping us at a distance from the bitter, angry man who lies beneath the cool veneer. It is difficult to get a good reading of him here, but by the time we arrive at his next chastisement of Alexander, his malevolence is exceedingly clear. In response to the bishop’s degradation and punishment, the young boy grows more obstinate in his disobedience, and yet even he can only stand so many beatings before being forced into submission. Watching on, Fanny silently recoils from the bishop’s touch, and Emilie’s contempt for her husband grows. With all paths of escape cut off, they become a broken, trapped family, suffering in an austere hellhole.

*Alexander facing the bishop’s wrath, isolated even from his own sister in this shot while the bishop sits back with his family and house staff.*

Still, visions of Oskar’s ghost continue to haunt Alexander like reminders of a brighter past, bearing witness to the depression left behind in his wake. These transcendent experiences extend to other family members too, as late in the film Oskar also appears to Helena, his bereaved mother. He speaks little, instead simply becoming the audience to her eloquent soliloquy on the process of accepting her grief, as well as the multiple coexistent truths at the core of Bergman’s dramaturgical metaphor.

“Life, it’s all acting anyway. Some roles are nice, other not so nice. I played a mother. I played Juliet and Margareta. Then suddenly I played a widow or a grandmother. One role follows the other. The thing is not to shrink from them.”

*Oskar’s ghost manifesting to both Alexander and Helena, always in his white suit and silently pacing the halls of the family home.*

And yet, even as an actress with a deeper understanding of the human condition than her grandson, the pain is no less present.

“My feelings came from deep in my body. Even though I could control them, they shattered reality, if you know what I mean. Reality has remained broken ever since… and oddly enough, it feels more real that way. So, I don’t bother to mend it.”

Bergman’s screenplay flows like poetry through these thoughtful contemplations of life-changing events, bringing this story full circle with the restoration of the family unit. Just as celebrations of Christ’s birth open the film, so too is new life breathed into the Ekdahl clan with the christening of Alexander’s newborn baby sister, reviving the cycles of tradition which connect one generation to the next. Still, even as the conclusion of this epic drama sees the bishop damned to hell in a house fire, four words punctuate its ending with a lingering thread of trauma, keeping his ghost alive in Alexander’s mind.

“You can’t escape me.”

*Surreal visions emerging at moments when Alexander is overcome with emotion, transporting him to a new location altogether as he is entranced by a story*.

The fantastical imagination of Bergman’s young protagonist is evidently as dangerous as it is enchanting, filtering the world through a lens that distorts every intense emotional experience into a memory that will never fade away. Not only does it manifest as supernatural creatures and visions, but it is also baked right into those dazzling bursts of colour that decorate the fabrics and textures of his family’s home, leaping out like nostalgic recollections of a youth that was only partially lived in the real world. By simply dwelling within this perspective, Fanny and Alexander becomes a deeply sentimental work for Bergman, magnificently distilling his own dreams into expressions of childhood wonder and terror.

A return to family tradition, though with a change in decor – the reds and greens of Christmas Eve are replaced with pastels to represent a christening, signifying a birth and renewal within the Ekdahl clan.

Fanny and Alexander is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Our Hospitality (1923)

Buster Keaton | 1hr 14min

In a world of overwhelming natural forces seeking to overcome Buster Keaton’s stone-faced romantic, the added threat of an entire family out for his blood only complicates matters further – not that he is entirely aware of the danger closing in on him. When Willie McKay falls for Virginia Canfield, a young woman he meets on the train back to his hometown, he does not know the true extent of the long-running feud between their families. Ever since he was sent away to New York as a baby twenty years ago, his upbringing has sheltered him from the knowledge their continued animosity, making this Southern American village a very dangerous place indeed for the heir to the McKay estate. If there is going to be any saving grace in a situation as tense as this, then it is the Canfields’ unwavering code of honour towards guests, ironically granting Willie sanctuary for as long as he is in the home of his enemy.

*Compositional beauty isn’t always the focus for Keaton, but arranges a fine shot here as he stands by the piano, singled out as the target of the Canfields’ hostility.*

Much like Keaton’s great comedic masterpiece The General from a few years later, Our Hospitality finds its inspiration in American history. The Hatfield-McCoy feud stretched multiple decades in the latter half of the 19^th century, and although it becomes the subject of Keaton’s satire here, its politics couldn’t be of less interest to him. Right from his opening intertitles, he brushes off any attempt to derive meaning from their feud with a simple dismissal of their mutual hatred.

“Men of one family grew up killing men of another family for no other reason except that their father had done so.”

As a result, all we are left with in the present day are the giant egos of small men, bound by traditions that only drive them deeper into their blind convictions. Keaton doesn’t hold back from confronting the dire stakes at hand, quite unusually sapping his prologue of all humour and drenching it in a vicious thunderstorm as the two family patriarchs shoot each other dead. It isn’t until he turns up as the happily oblivious Willie McKay that Our Hospitality takes a lighter turn, whisking him through various mishaps as he rides a tiny steam train across America towards his inherited estate.

*The stormy prologue that kills off the patriarchs of both families is pure drama, but Keaton’s direction does not falter in his dramatic lightning flashes, violent wind, and downpour of rain.*

Both this film and Three Ages may mark Keaton’s first features, but by 1923 he had already spent years refining his art as a director and actor of short comedies, effectively setting him up next to Charlie Chaplin as a master of visual comedy. So too had his personal fascination with locomotives been established during this time, as here he continues to bounce physical gags off these giant symbols of modernity and progress. Crooked railways toss passengers up and down, wheels fall off, and carriages are split apart at a crossroads, yet his stoic vehicles relentlessly chug along at their own steady pace, indifferent to those caught up in its chaos.

*Keaton’s love of steam trains forms the basis of much visual comedy in Our Hospitality, proving to be a quaint inconvenience to their passengers.*

*Excellent foreground and background work in Keaton’s gags, leaving the train driver oblivious to the carriages speeding off down a parallel track.*

What Chaplin never quite got the hang of though which Keaton takes to with ease in Our Hospitality is the enormous potential of the camera in framing these gags, frequently setting us back in wide shots to appreciate the dramatic irony unfolding across each layer of the image. As the train driver thoughtlessly kicks back in the foreground, Keaton squares up his shot to catch the rogue carriages that have broken free behind him, making their way down a parallel track. Later when Willie tries to escape the Canfields disguised as a woman, Keaton once again angles his camera from a distance to catch the back of a frock and umbrella, only to reveal the horse that he has dressed up and put in his place just as it turns to the side. This visual comedy is just as much about the creative conception as it is the perspective taken, abiding by a strict set of cinematic rules. If we can’t see something in the frame, then neither can his characters. If his characters can’t see it, then we still might catch the punchline just behind their turned backs.

There were virtually no other directors framing their comedy like this in the early days of cinema, including Chaplin – this horse gag is one of Keaton’s best, emphasising the significance of perspective to reveal the punchline.

*Dramatic irony in Keaton’s wide shots, drawing tension from the danger that lurks just around corners.*

It is also through these stylistic devices that Willie remains so clueless to the Canfield brothers’ attempts to murder him, drawing out the tension of their one-sided conflict through the walls that divide them. For a time, he is only getting by on pure luck and blissful ignorance, right up until Virginia invites him home and inadvertently grants him protection as a guest. When the recognition of his perilous situation sets in though, the whole world suddenly shifts for Willie – the moment he steps outside, he is a dead man, and so he must constantly stay one step ahead of his hosts whose hands rest above their holsters. Just as Keaton delights in outsmarting the Canfield brothers, so too does he indulge in some darkly comic wordplay here, with the father making menacing small talk about the rainy weather – “It would be the death of anyone to go outside tonight” – and Virginia failing to recognise the irony of her piano piece, ‘We’ll Miss You When You’re Gone.’

*Physical comedy as Willie outsmarts his hosts, bending the rules imposed on him by their code of hospitality.*

*Keaton’s deadpan face is perfect for this comedy, adopting women’s clothing to make a getaway in disguise.*

*Strong location shooting combined with epic imagery as Keaton blows up the dam – quite innovative in this era of studio filmmaking.*

Still, Our Hospitality never strays too far from the real reason Keaton held such mass appeal to 1920s audiences, as right around the corner from every understated witticism is a grand set piece showing off his athletic stunt work. Much of the action here centres around a dam that is blown up early in the film to irrigate the surrounding forest, making for a superbly economical narrative when Willie is dumped from his getaway train into its waterfall. Steep drops such as these are where Keaton the actor works best, scaling cliff faces like a silent era Tom Cruise, throwing his full body into the action, and building up to one of the greatest stunts of his career. With a rope tied around his waist and Virginia being swept towards her death, he leaps from the edge of the cliff, grabs her by the arms, and saves her just as she begins her plummet to the rocky riverbed below.

*Keaton the stuntman shows off his athletic prowess and coordination in the final act, as he dangles from cliffs and straddles a pair of split train carriages.*

*Still one of Keaton’s greatest set pieces and stunts, swinging from the edge of the cliff to save his lover as she plummets over the edge of a waterfall.*

Keaton’s physical presence may be violently pushed around by enormous forces far beyond his control, but it is his adept navigation of chaotic environments that makes him such a compelling figure to watch onscreen, and which further quells his conflict with the Canfields. Their truce does not just come through a laying down of arms, but a romantic union of children from two warring families like Romeo and Juliet – though of course Keaton does not squander the opportunity to play this as a brilliant final gag, giving up about a dozen guns revealed to be hidden on his body. Ignorance to immediate danger may be bliss in Our Hospitality, but accidentally ending a decades-old feud by saving a life may be even more gratifying.

*A hilarious final gag to end the film, with Keaton laying down arms hidden in his pockets, coat, and boots.*

Our Hospitality is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

The 250 Best Films of All Time

Films from the last 10 years have not been included on this list, and will be eligible in future updates when the moratorium has passed.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick	1968
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc	Carl Theodor Dreyer	1928
3. Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola	1979
4. Stalker	Andrei Tarkovsky	1979
5. Citizen Kane	Orson Welles	1941
6. Blade Runner	Ridley Scott	1982
7. 8 1/2	Federico Fellini	1963
8. Vertigo	Alfred Hitchcock	1958
9. The Tree of Life	Terrence Malick	2011
10. Tokyo Story	Yasujirō Ozu	1953
11. The Searchers	John Ford	1956
12. In the Mood for Love	Wong Kar-wai	2000
13. Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean	1962
14. La Dolce Vita	Federico Fellini	1960
15. The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola	1972
16. Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese	1980
17. Persona	Ingmar Bergman	1966
18. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans	F.W. Murnau	1927
19. Breathless	Jean-Luc Godard	1960
20. Taxi Driver	Martin Scorsese	1976
21. The Godfather Part II	Francis Ford Coppola	1974
22. Battleship Potemkin	Sergei Eisenstein	1925
23. Bicycle Thieves	Vittorio de Sica	1948
24. Seven Samurai	Akira Kurosawa	1954
25. Last Year at Marienbad	Alain Resnais	1961
26. Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino	1994
27. Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa	1950
28. Barry Lyndon	Stanley Kubrick	1975
29. The Rules of the Game	Jean Renoir	1939
30. Days of Heaven	Terrence Malick	1978
31. High and Low	Akira Kurosawa	1963
32. I Am Cuba	Mikhail Kalatozov	1964
33. Nostalghia	Andrei Tarkovsky	1983
34. Psycho	Alfred Hitchcock	1960
35. The Third Man	Carol Reed	1949
36. There Will Be Blood	Paul Thomas Anderson	2007
37. Goodfellas	Martin Scorsese	1990
38. Andrei Rublev	Andrei Tarkovsky	1966
39. Children of Men	Alfonso Cuarón	2006
40. The Seventh Seal	Ingmar Bergman	1957
41. Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages	D.W. Griffith	1916
42. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover	Peter Greenaway	1989
43. Fanny and Alexander	Ingmar Bergman	1982
44. Grand Illusion	Jean Renoir	1937
45. Touch of Evil	Orson Welles	1958
46. Jules and Jim	François Truffaut	1962
47. Napoleon	Abel Gance	1927
48. Breaking the Waves	Lars von Trier	1996
49. Pierrot Le Fou	Jean-Luc Godard	1965
50. Metropolis	Fritz Lang	1927
51. Ikiru	Akira Kurosawa	1952
52. A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick	1971
53. Chungking Express	Wong Kar-wai	1994
54. Rear Window	Alfred Hitchcock	1954
55. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly	Sergio Leone	1966
56. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari	Robert Wiene	1920
57. The Thin Red Line	Terrence Malick	1998
58. Gone With the Wind	Victor Fleming	1939
59. L’Avventura	Michelangelo Antonioni	1960
60. Sátántangó	Béla Tarr	1994
61. Once Upon a Time in the West	Sergio Leone	1968
62. Cries and Whispers	Ingmar Bergman	1972
63. The Turin Horse	Béla Tarr	2011
64. The Shining	Stanley Kubrick	1980
65. Magnolia	Paul Thomas Anderson	1999
66. The Leopard	Luchino Visconti	1963
67. The Master	Paul Thomas Anderson	2012
68. Werckmeister Harmonies	Béla Tarr	2000
69. Do the Right Thing	Spike Lee	1989
70. Mulholland Drive	David Lynch	2001
71. Hero	Zhang Yimou	2002
72. The Trial	Orson Welles	1962
73. The Conformist	Bernardo Bertolucci	1970
74. Casablanca	Michael Curtiz	1942
75. The 400 Blows	François Truffaut	1959
76. A Brighter Summer Day	Edward Yang	1991
77. Mirror	Andrei Tarkovsky	1975
78. Brazil	Terry Gilliam	1985
79. The Magnificent Ambersons	Orson Welles	1942
80. Rocco and His Brothers	Luchino Visconti	1960
81. The Wizard of Oz	Victor Fleming	1939
82. Heaven’s Gate	Michael Cimino	1980
83. Aguirre, the Wrath of God	Werner Herzog	1972
84. The Human Condition	Masaki Kobayashi	1959-61
85. Nosferatu	F.W. Murnau	1922
86. Early Summer	Yasujirō Ozu	1951
87. Paths of Glory	Stanley Kubrick	1957
88. Yi Yi	Edward Yang	2000
89. The Wild Bunch	Sam Peckinpah	1969
90. Boogie Nights	Paul Thomas Anderson	1997
91. Stagecoach	John Ford	1939
92. Annie Hall	Woody Allen	1977
93. M	Fritz Lang	1931
94. Manhattan	Woody Allen	1979
95. The Double Life of Veronique	Krzsyztof Kieslowski	1991
96. Lost in Translation	Sofia Coppola	2003
97. JFK	Oliver Stone	1991
98. The New World	Terrence Malick	2005
99. Lola Montes	Max Ophüls	1955
100. It’s a Wonderful Life	Frank Capra	1946
101. Blue Velvet	David Lynch	1986
102. The Blue Angel	Josef von Sternberg	1930
103. Nashville	Robert Altman	1975
104. Rome, Open City	Roberto Rossellini	1945
105. Umberto D.	Vittorio de Sica	1952
106. Children of Paradise	Marcel Carne	1945
107. City Lights	Charlie Chaplin	1931
108. Chinatown	Roman Polanski	1974
109. Punch-Drunk Love	Paul Thomas Anderson	2002
110. Gertrud	Carl Theodor Dreyer	1964
111. Ran	Akira Kurosawa	1985
112. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford	Andrew Dominik	2007
113. The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino	1978
114. Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder	1950
115. North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock	1959
116. The French Connection	William Friedkin	1971
117. The Red Shoes	Michael Powell	1948
118. A Short Film About Killing	Krzysztof Kieslowski	1988
119. Dead Man	Jim Jarmusch	1995
120. Dekalog	Krzysztof Kieslowski	1989
121. Heat	Michael Mann	1995
122. The Big Sleep	Howard Hawks	1946
123. Once Upon a Time in America	Sergio Leone	1984
124. Modern Times	Charlie Chaplin	1936
125. Contempt	Jean-Luc Godard	1963
126. Don’t Look Now	Nicolas Roeg	1973
127. Ida	Paweł Pawlikowski	2013
128. Fargo	The Coen Brothers	1996
129. Double Indemnity	Billy Wilder	1944
130. L’Eclisse	Michelangelo Antonioni	1962
131. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg	Jacques Demy	1964
132. Hiroshima Mon Amour	Alain Resnais	1959
133. Three Colours: Blue	Krzysztof Kieslowski	1993
134. The Social Network	David Fincher	2010
135. Inception	Christopher Nolan	2010
136. Fitzcarraldo	Werner Herzog	1982
137. Naked	Mike Leigh	1993
138. Three Colours: Red	Krzysztof Kieslowski	1994
139. The General	Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman	1926
140. McCabe & Mrs. Miller	Robert Altman	1971
141. Black Narcissus	Michael Powell	1947
142. The Birth of a Nation	D.W. Griffith	1915
143. Autumn Sonata	Ingmar Bergman	1978
144. 2046	Wong Kar-wai	2004
145. The Royal Tenenbaums	Wes Anderson	2001
146. The White Ribbon	Michael Haneke	2009
147. Jaws	Steven Spielberg	1975
148. Syndromes and a Century	Apichatpong Weerasethakul	2006
149. The Scarlet Empress	Josef von Sternberg	1934
150. Notorious	Alfred Hitchcock	1946
151. The Lord of the Rings	Peter Jackson	2001-03
152. Singin’ in the Rain	Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly	1952
153. Suspiria	Dario Argento	1977
154. Shoot the Piano Player	François Truffaut	1960
155. A Matter of Life and Death	Michael Powell	1946
156. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	Luis Buñuel	1972
157. Inside Llewyn Davis	The Coen Brothers	2013
158. Rosemary’s Baby	Roman Polanski	1968
159. Winter Light	Ingmar Bergman	1963
160. Kill Bill	Quentin Tarantino	2003-04
161. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance	Park Chan-wook	2002
162. Schindler’s List	Steven Spielberg	1993
163. PlayTime	Jacques Tati	1967
164. Malcolm X	Spike Lee	1992
165. Le Plaisir	Max Ophüls	1952
166. Chimes at Midnight	Orson Welles	1965
167. The Graduate	Mike Nichols	1967
168. Melancholia	Lars von Trier	2011
169. Sweet Smell of Success	Alexander Mackendrick	1956
170. The Grapes of Wrath	John Ford	1940
171. Dancer in the Dark	Lars von Trier	2000
172. The Exorcist	William Friedkin	1973
173. Viridiana	Luis Buñuel	1961
174. Point Blank	John Boorman	1967
175. Cache	Michael Haneke	2005
176. Sherlock Jr.	Buster Keaton	1924
177. Harakiri	Masaki Kobayashi	1962
178. Requiem for a Dream	Darren Aronofsky	2000
179. Written on the Wind	Douglas Sirk	1956
180. Red River	Howard Hawks	1948
181. Performance	Nicolas Roeg	1970
182. Black Swan	Darren Aronofsky	2010
183. The Virgin Spring	Ingmar Bergman	1960
184. Flowers of Shanghai	Hou Hsiao-hsien	1998
185. Alien	Ridley Scott	1979
186. Moonrise Kingdom	Wes Anderson	2012
187. Laura	Otto Preminger	1944
188. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance	John Ford	1962
189. Distant Voices, Still Lives	Terence Davies	1988
190. The Conversation	Francis Ford Coppola	1974
191. Mean Streets	Martin Scorsese	1973
192. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp	Michael Powell	1943
193. The Big Lebowski	The Coen Brothers	1998
194. All That Heaven Allows	Douglas Sirk	1955
195. Dead Ringers	David Cronenberg	1988
196. La Strada	Federico Fellini	1954
197. Irreversible	Gaspar Noé	2002
198. The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean	1957
199. Germany Year Zero	Roberto Rossellini	1948
200. Fight Club	David Fincher	1999
201. The Age of Innocence	Martin Scorsese	1993
202. The Empire Strikes Back	Irvin Kershner	1980
203. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	John Huston	1948
204. Inglourious Basterds	Quentin Tarantino	2009
205. Zodiac	David Fincher	2007
206. Le Samouraï	Jean-Pierre Melville	1967
207. No Country For Old Men	The Coen Brothers	2007
208. Johnny Guitar	Nicholas Ray	1954
209. Late Spring	Yasujirō Ozu	1949
210. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	Stanley Kubrick	1964
211. Yojimbo	Akira Kurosawa	1961
212. The Dark Knight	Christopher Nolan	2008
213. A Zed and Two Noughts	Peter Greenaway	1985
214. 1900	Bernardo Bertolucci	1976
215. Imitation of Life	Douglas Sirk	1959
216. The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme	1991
217. Atonement	Joe Wright	2007
218. The Sacrifice	Andrei Tarkovsky	1986
219. Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	1981
220. Pan’s Labyrinth	Guillermo del Toro	2006
221. Bonnie and Clyde	Arthur Penn	1967
222. Pickpocket	Robert Bresson	1959
223. Amadeus	Miloš Forman	1984
224. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind	Michel Gondry	2004
225. La Notte	Michelangelo Antonioni	1961
226. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Miloš Forman	1975
227. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	1974
228. Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood	1992
229. Shame	Steve McQueen	2011
230. The Silence	Ingmar Bergman	1963
231. It Happened One Night	Frank Capra	1934
232. Star Wars	George Lucas	1977
233. White Heat	Raoul Walsh	1949
234. Love Me Tonight	Rouben Mamoulian	1932
235. Rushmore	Wes Anderson	1998
236. The Night of the Hunter	Charles Laughton	1955
237. Blow Out	Brian de Palma	1981
238. Midnight Cowboy	John Schlesinger	1969
239. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	George Roy Hill	1969
240. A Woman Under the Influence	John Cassavetes	1974
241. Out of the Past	Jacques Tourneur	1947
242. Moulin Rouge!	Baz Luhrmann	2001
243. Mon Oncle	Jacques Tati	1958
244. Greed	Eric von Stroheim	1924
245. Bringing Up Baby	Howard Hawks	1938
246. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days	Cristian Mungiu	2007
247. Network	Sidney Lumet	1976
248. Lost Highway	David Lynch	1997
249. Before Sunset	Richard Linklater	2004
250. MAS*H	Robert Altman	1970

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 44min

Ingmar Bergman splits Peter Egarmann’s visit to the brothel where prostitute Ka works in two halves, but much like the rest of From the Life of the Marionettes, they do not unfold in the order they occur. His sudden snap, brutal murder of Ka, and necrophilic rape makes for a viscerally disturbing opening, seemingly coming out of nowhere during a gentle embrace between the two. Red lighting drenches the interiors with an air of lust and danger, but Ingmar Bergman also continues to draw that palette through the walls and furniture that Ka hides behind in terror.

When the terrible deed is done, all colour drains from Bergman’s cinematography in a single fade to black-and-white, not to be seen again until the film’s final minutes. When that time comes though, we finally witness Peter’s initial arrival at the brothel, quietly nervous but not hinting yet at a murderous rage. Ka, we find out, is short for Katarina – the same name as his wife, who we know by now has been the subject of his barbaric dreams. This time, Bergman spares us from witnessing his brutal eruption, but afterwards as we hang on a close-up of his eyes, his monochrome perspective slowly fades back into colour.

While everything in between these segments cuts non-linearly across the greyscale months preceding and following what Bergman labels the “disaster,” the implications that Peter only finds colour in his world through this murder are horrifying. His defiling of Ka’s body is an atrocious expression of the psychological torment that has plagued him since childhood, breaking through his pretence of masculinity with a vivid, honest assertion of his repressed anger and desire. Bergman has long considered the fragile minds that lurk beneath mild personas, but From the Life of the Marionettes is easily his most violent rupturing of that veil, seeking whatever logic lies at the source of this random outburst.

Not that the eventual resolution Bergman presents us with is terribly compelling. The psychiatrist’s reasoning that involves latent homosexuality and emotional blackouts is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s similar diagnosis at the end of Psycho, with its heavy-handed superficiality doing little to tie it all together. It is rather by sorting through the build-up and aftermath of the disaster that Peter’s mental unwellness properly comes into view, pieced together by the fragments of second-hand stories.

The structure of From the Life of the Marionettes thus takes the form of a Citizen Kane-inspired narrative, though with clumsy intertitles between scenes unfortunately over-explaining the context of each. Bit by bit, we come to understand Peter’s childhood through his mother, his sexual insecurity through his wife, and his final days before the disaster through her coworker, Tim. It is his spiteful jealousy and sexual feelings for Peter which became the catalyst for the disaster in the first place, seeing him purposefully introduce him to Ka so that a wedge may be driven into his marriage. Peter’s attempted suicide two days before murdering Ka also heavily indicates a man on the verge of doing something drastically destructive, but even this cry for help falls on deaf ears. This is a man who has been isolated by others, and thus further isolates himself.

Perhaps the most revealing sequence of all arrives when From the Life of the Marionettes fully penetrates Peter’s subconscious mind, consuming him in the vast, white void of his dreams. Within this realm, Bergman fully expresses his trademark surrealism in dreamy dissolves, low frame rates, and obscured close-ups as Peter examines the body of his naked wife, trying to make love to her yet failing. In response to her mocking smile, he attacks her in a frenzy, and although his rage quickly dissolves in her warm, maternal embrace, it comes too late. Katarina is dead, and he knows he is responsible.

“Do I live at all? Or was that dream, as it was, my only short moment of life? Of truly experienced and conquered reality?”

More than any psychiatrist’s diagnosis, it is this surreal passage which most profoundly roots Peter’s action in some psychological foundation. To destroy what he deems the source of his masculine insecurity is to finally see his life in vibrant colour, despite there being new emotional prisons confining him inside a physical one. If he considered himself emasculated before, then he is even more sapped of his identity here, spending his days playing chess against computers and neglecting any contact with the outside world. As he lays in bed, he clutches his only shred of self left – a teddy bear kept from his childhood. Perhaps some blame can be pinned on society at large for failing Peter in From the Life of the Marionettes, selfishly manipulating him into emotional isolation, but this murderer’s retaliatory self-degradation is totally of his own tragic making.

From the Life of the Marionettes is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV.

May I ask, why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

May I ask why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

[…] 13. Bringing Up Baby […]

Where would you place it on the list?

I have to say, Really shocked to see Hero not make the cut