Search

Description

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES include: new 2K digital restoration, introduction by Ingmar Bergman from 2001, new interview with actor Harriet Andersson, new video essay on the film’s visuals, behind-the-scenes footage, and Ingmar Bergman: Reflections on Life, Death, and Love with Erland Josephson (2000), a 52-minute interview with Bergman and his longtime collaborator, and more. This existential wail of a drama from Ingmar Bergman (Wild Strawberries) concerns two sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), keeping vigil for a third, Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is dying of cancer and can find solace only in the arms of a beatific nurse (Kari Sylwan). An intensely felt film that may be Bergman's most striking formal experiment, Cries and Whispers (which won an Oscar for the extraordinary color photography of Sven Nykvist) is a powerful depiction of human behavior in the face of death, positioned on the borders between reality and nightmare, tranquility and terror.

Description

In 1960, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began work on three of his most powerful and representative films, eventually recognized as a trilogy. Already a figure of international acclaim for such masterpieces as The Seventh Seal and The Magician, Bergman turned his back on the expressionism of his fifties work to focus on a series of chamber dramas exploring belief and alienation in the modern age. Collaborating with the distinguished cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and eliciting searing performances from his refined cast of regulars Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Ingrid Thulin, and Max von Sydow among them Bergman unleashed Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence in rapid succession, exposing moviegoers worldwide to a new level of intellectual and emotional intensity. Drawing on Bergman's own upbringing and ongoing spiritual crises, the films of the trilogy examine the necessity of religion and question the promise of faith.

Description

In 1960, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began work on three of his most powerful and representative films, eventually recognized as a trilogy. Already a figure of international acclaim for such masterpieces as The Seventh Seal and The Magician, Bergman turned his back on the expressionism of his fifties work to focus on a series of chamber dramas exploring belief and alienation in the modern age. Collaborating with the distinguished cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and eliciting searing performances from his refined cast of regulars Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Ingrid Thulin, and Max von Sydow among them Bergman unleashed Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence in rapid succession, exposing moviegoers worldwide to a new level of intellectual and emotional intensity. Drawing on Bergman's own upbringing and ongoing spiritual crises, the films of the trilogy examine the necessity of religion and question the promise of faith.

Description

In 1960, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began work on three of his most powerful and representative films, eventually recognized as a trilogy. Already a figure of international acclaim for such masterpieces as The Seventh Seal and The Magician, Bergman turned his back on the expressionism of his fifties work to focus on a series of chamber dramas exploring belief and alienation in the modern age. Collaborating with the distinguished cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and eliciting searing performances from his refined cast of regulars Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, Ingrid Thulin, and Max von Sydow among them Bergman unleashed Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence in rapid succession, exposing moviegoers worldwide to a new level of intellectual and emotional intensity. Drawing on Bergman's own upbringing and ongoing spiritual crises, the films of the trilogy examine the necessity of religion and question the promise of faith.

Description

Ingmar Bergman presents the battle of the sexes as a ramshackle, grotesque carnival of humiliation in Sawdust and Tinsel, one of the master's most vivid early works and his first of many collaborations with the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist. The story of the charged relationship between a turn-of-the-twentieth-century circus owner (Ake Gronberg) and his younger mistress (Harriet Andersson), a horseback rider in the traveling show, the film features dreamlike detours and twisted psychosexual power plays, making for a piercingly brilliant depiction of physical and spiritual degradation.

Description

After fifteen films that received mostly local acclaim, the 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende) at last ushered in an international audience for Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries). In turn-of-the-century Sweden, four men and four women of different classes attempt to navigate the laws of attraction. During a weekend in the country, the women collude to force the men’s hands in matters of the heart, exposing their pretensions and insecurities along the way. Chock-full of flirtatious propositions and sharp witticisms delivered by such Swedish screen legends as Gunnar Björnstrand (The Seventh Seal, Winter Light) and Harriet Andersson (Through a Glass Darkly, Cries and Whispers), Smiles of a Summer Night is one of cinema’s great erotic comedies.