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Synopsis
In honor of Ingmar Bergman’s one-hundredth birthday, the Criterion Collection is proud to present the most comprehensive collection of his films ever released on home video. One of the most revelatory voices to emerge from the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema, Bergman was a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. The struggles of faith and morality, the nature of dreams, and the agonies and ecstasies of human relationships—Bergman explored these subjects in films ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family life.
Arranged as a film festival with opening and closing nights bookending double features and centerpieces, this selection spans six decades and thirty-nine films—including such celebrated classics as The Seventh Seal, Persona, and Fanny and Alexander alongside previously unavailable works like Dreams, The Rite, and Brink of Life. Accompanied by a 248-page book with essays on each program, as well as by more than thirty hours of supplemental features, Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema traces themes and images across Bergman’s career, blazing trails through the master’s unequaled body of work for longtime fans and newcomers alike.
Picture 9/10
Disc 14 of Criterion’s box set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema presents the final film in Bergman’s Trilogy, The Silence, which is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 on a dual-layer disc. Like the Blu-ray found in the individual Trilogy box set, the presentation comes from a new 2K restoration scanned from a 35mm interpositive.
Like other discs in this set, outside of the menu background, the disc found here appears to be identical to the disc found in that Trilogy box set, meaning the encode and presentation are (or at least appear to be) the same. From that review:
The Silence […provides] yet another gorgeous, film-like presentation. It’s a sharp looking image with a high level of detail in just about every shot, only a handful of exterior shots looking a bit softer around the edges. The film has a lot of darker sequences and the shadows really look spectacular during these moments, details never getting lost. Contrast looks good and grayscale smoothly transitions, lending more to that photographic look, and black levels are inky and rich.
The previous DVD looked good (and I would say it probably offered the best-looking image in that set), but it was open to improvement and this edition is up to that task. On top of the improved detail and better compression this restoration also cleans up all of the previous blemishes and issues that remained in the source: everything, even some slight flicker, has been corrected. It’s a great looking picture.
Audio 0/10
Copied from the review for the disc found in the Ingmar Bergman Film Trilogy box set:
Like the DVD the Blu-ray again offers the original Swedish track and an alternate English-dub track, the former presented in linear PCM 1.0 mono and the latter in Dolby Digital 1.0 mono. The English track sounds to be a direct port of the one found on the DVD: it’s fine for an English-dub, but it’s flat and tinny, with a noticeable edge to it. It sounds old and it also doesn’t sound like much restoration has been done.
The Swedish track is the better one, sounding to have gone through more of a restoration process. It’s cleaner and the dialogue has decent depth and fidelity present, and background noise isn’t as noticeable. It still shows its age but it’s clean and easy to hear.
Extras 4/10
Criterion does port everything over from the original DVD release of the film, though it wasn’t much:
The only new feature found on this disc is a short introduction with Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003 by Marie Nyeröd, where the filmmaker talks about the film and some of the controversies around it. This is expanded upon in more significant detail by Peter Cowie in his 11-minute interview, ported over from the DVD. On top of going over the various cuts made to the film around the world (though incredibly it played in the U.S. with very few cuts), as well as how these controversies led to a solid box office take, Cowie also talks about how the film differs technically compared to all of Bergman’s film up to that point, singling out a few different moments.
The disc also ports over the small poster gallery found on the DVD, showing off a handful of posters for the films (more for The Silence, which has a couple of really good ones), and then the U.S. theatrical trailer. The essay by Leo Braudy found in the DVD’s insert does not get carried over at all.
The set’s included 247-page book also features the same essay by Catherine Wheatley, covering the trilogy. Sadly, this film receives the slimmest set of supplements for the Trilogy.
Closing
Of the Trilogy it’s the weakest in relation to supplements, but the presentation is still top-notch.
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