Just as a reminder:

A Lesson in love
Port of Call
Torment
The Rite

Expect them all on December, 6th

Sendit used to be Blackstar. I have bought from them in both incarnations and the service is excellent. Their prices aren't as cheap as other UK stores for example: Bensons World.

does anyone know much about these early bergmans and their critical reaction?

ill admit to relative ignorance on these 4, which one of these is most highly thought of?

The Rite is the one I'm buying as it's one that I want to see for the longest time. It was Bergman's first TV work and I'm afraid to think what his fellow patriots though of it, judging from the synopsis...

Here's a very good article about it, and 2 pictures: 1 - 2. And while I'm at it, here's a fantastic looking poster!

All of these are interesting films if you're already into Bergman, but I wouldn't recommend any of these over, say, the Criterions or the MGM set.

Torment prefigures a lot of the themes throughout Bergman's earlier career: young outcasts trying to find a place within a system. It's a kind of perverse reconfiguration of Blue Angel complete with German Expressionist touches.

Port of Call is very neo-realist (as has been mentioned) and therefore not very "Bergman". An interesting project for Bergman, but not among the best of his early films.

Lesson in Love is probably the most complex of this batch, with some of Bergman's earliest experimentation with narrative structure, narration, and genre-bending. The tone will shift from screwball comedy to melodrama within a single shot. Also some great scenes between Gunnar Bjornstrand and Eva Dahlbeck, and between Bjornstrand and Harriet Andersen as father and daughter (shades of Through a Glass Darkly).

The Rite is quite a bit later than the others, but I'll confess to being generally underwhelmed by it. Along with some of Bergman's other chamber dramas (like After the Rehearsal), it veers just a bit too close to self-parody for my taste. Still, the acting is worth seeing -- Bjornstrand gives a very weird, meek performance, and Thulin is at her most disturbingly unpleasant.

Hope this helps.

Torment was actually directed by Alf Sjöberg, from a script by Bergman. It was a great success domestically and is still one of the more popular classics here, not only among Bergman buffs. Then again, some of that may have to do with the pleasure of seeing the great comedian Stig Järrel cast completely against type as the sadistic schoolteacher and doing such a great job of it -- that particular delight will of course be lost on non-Swedes.

I haven't seen The Rite but some of its shortcomings may perhaps be excused by the fact that it was made for TV.

Reviews from DVD Times for Port of Call and A Lesson in Love.

Just watched The Rite yesterday evening and enjoyed it thoroughly. The film itself although barely 75 minutes long, is one hell of a ride and this one comes to further prove something I've already said about Bergman's filmmaking in previous posts: he is very economic in his storytelling and never wastes a minute of film. The final result is thus like a condensed and highly-charged mixture of powerful dialogue, superb acting and perfect framing of themes and subjects.

There is almost no sets in this film - what you see are the faces of the actors (only four with Bergman making a cameo as a priest, no less!) and sometimes you get the feel that you're watching one of those plays where there are almost no props on the stage. Very in your face, if you pardon the pun!

A/V is excellent as always chez Tartan but I do wish that they'd start including any kind of substantial extras on their Bergman titles. They've got so many that it is a real pity that we have to wait for Criterion to release some of their titles just to get the extras - not that I mind, though!

Still, it would be nice if a Bergman TV films themed boxset arrived c/o our favorite DVD company - From the Life of the Marionettes would be a nice inclusion alongside After the Rehearsal.

P.S. speaking of FTLOTM: I found it to be a bit similar in tone and look to The Rite and for those who like to know a bit of trivia, it also features conversations/interrogations taped onto a tape-recorder very much in the way the former film does.

Excellent review here

I thought the film was ok until I saw the giant dildos....the horror, the horror...!

Yes, Gunnar Bjornstrand with a strap-on has to be one of the most unpleasant things I've ever seen. Honestly, even as a huge Bergman fan, I think this film is a little over-the-top. If anyone wanted to accuse Bergman as being morbidly masturbatory, this film would function well as Exhibit A. It strikes me as a rather muddy, abrasive and overblown rehashing of the same themes that he explored far more artfully (and palatably) in The Magician.

Without wanting to put Bergman's career in evolutionary terms, I think the film is somewhat regressive, even crude, in comparison to the more expansive (albeit grim) world-view of the Island films. As excoriatingly introspective as those films are, they seem to be always aware of and distanced from their characters' self-absorption. The Rite strikes me as a rare display of that type of self-absorption and self-importance from Bergman.

unless it was a balls out comedy, which i don't think it was. and leo's dead right on the comparison to the magician.

I think your being a bit hard on THE RITE. I like it for what it is: a TV chamber piece which explores the theme of the artist vs. society already in progress from PERSONA to PASSION. The feeling I get from this work is of a drama rather than a film and I believe, in this sense, it is an interesting addition to the master's complete works. Note the film was made [May-June 1967] after HOUR OF THE WOLF but released in 1969 after PASSION.

isn't that basically the glass half full version of what leo said?