Ingmar Bergman

[MichaelB]

Here's what's in the set, in chronological order:

Torment (d. Alf Sjöberg, w. Bergman)
Crisis
Music in Darkness
Port of Call
Prison
Three Strange Loves
To Joy
Summer Interlude
Waiting Women
Summer with Monika
A Lesson in Love
Dreams
Smiles of a Summer Night
The Seventh Seal
The Magician
Wild Strawberries
The Virgin Spring
Through a Glass Darkly
Winter Light
The Silence
Now About These Women
Persona
The Rite
Cries and Whispers
Scenes From A Marriage (short version - longer version on Criterion)
Autumn Sonata
Farodocument 79
From the Life of the Marionettes
After the Rehearsal
Saraband

But this is what isn't (amongst others - this doesn't include a fair amount of TV work):

It Rains On Our Love
A Ship To India
Sawdust and Tinsel - Tartan/forthcoming Criterion
Brink of Life
The Devil's Eye - Tartan
Shame - MGM
Hour of the Wolf - MGM
A Passion - MGM
The Touch
The Magic Flute - Criterion
Face to Face
The Serpent's Egg - MGM
Fanny and Alexander - Criterion (plus Artificial Eye, but there's really no contest)

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

But this is what isn't (amongst others - this doesn't include a fair amount of TV work):
It Rains On Our Love
A Ship To India
Brink of Life

These three are coming from a Swedish distributor in September with English subtitles. Unfortunately dvd sverige seems to have disappeared and dvd.se won't ship outside of Sweden. I wrote to laserdisken to ask if they were going to stock them but got no reply. Any suggestions where else to try are welcome.

[domino harvey]

tell XPloitedCinema to stock them, I want'em too!

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I take it all back - dvd.se seem to have revamped their site and I have now been able to order these three. Be prepared for steep shipping charges though.

[Matt]

Bergman archive in jeopardy

Looks like the squeaky wheel got the grease:

Sweden gives $3 million to Bergman works

Tue Sep 4, 11:16 AM ET
Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The Swedish government will give $3 million to promote and preserve the works of Ingmar Bergman.

The money will be used to help the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm set up an international theater festival in the late filmmaker's honor and buy the rights for scripts to his stage performances.

It will also enable new copies to be made of his films, which include "The Seventh Seal," "Through a Glass Darkly" and "Fanny and Alexander," Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said in a joint statement Monday with Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.

"Bergman has given Swedish stage art a unique position in the world. It deserves to be recognized both for a Swedish and international audience," Reinfeldt and Liljeroth said in the statement.

Considered one of great masters of 20th century cinema, Bergman died July 30 at 89 at his home on the Baltic Sea islet of Faro.

[Galen Young]

Bergman fans and/or fans of Elliot Gould may be interested to know that Gould is bringing his personal film print of Bergman's The Touch to the Port Townsend Film Festival on Sept. 30th. Supposedly he will do a Q and A after the screening.

[Barmy]

The Touch has languished for more than 35 years, unavailable at Bergman retrospectives or in any format, including videotape. The 35mm print being screened here is from Gould's private collection. Although the color photography has faded, the film is in excellent condition and one quickly adjusts to the overall pink cast to the emulsion.

Lies. It screened at the Walter Reade retro 10 years or so ago. I don't remember any print issues. Awesome film--I wish I had gone to see it more than once.

[domino harvey]

Finally caught the Devil's Eye courtesy of Tartan, was pleasantly surprised. I like how Bergman used Jarl Kulle for all four of his comedies (if we can count his role in F+A, which I think would be fair). He plays the material much drier here than in the other comedies, though the role is a lot less flamboyant for sure. Gunnar Bjornstrand as the narrator practically walks away with the movie.

[Sortini]

An 27 minutes interview with Bergman made in Iceland in 1987 can be downloaded for free at this site.

The interviewer is Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, author of the "Viking triology".

[colinr0380]

Video Watchblog article about Persona.

[Antoine Doinel]

Interesting article on Hollywood's attempts to woo Bergman and various potential projects (a biopic of Pushkin starring Harry Belafonte, Camus' La Chute with Cary Grant) that never came to be.

[colinr0380]

Ang Lee on Bergman from Criterion's On Five blog.

[tavernier]

Special Bergman tribute at BAM & PFA: Ingmar Bergman: Light and Shadow

[kaujot]

I would kill to see Fanny & Alexander on the big screen.

[alfons416]

I would kill to see Fanny & Alexander on the big screen.

then you should try to kill me, since i've seen Fanny & Alexander twice on the big screen. first time it was the theatrical version in a really huge cinema 770 seats, 100m^2 screen. second time was the (5 hour) television version (with a break in the middle). They show the 5 hour version every year on Epiphany day in my town, i think that cinema owns the only copy of the complete television version in Sweden. i'm thinking of seeing it again next year.

[martin]

Just in case anyone still want Tartan's 30-disc Ingmar Bergman Collection: I assume it's soon OOP. Most UK retailers (Bensons World, Choices, Sendit, 101CD, Dvd.co.uk etc.) lists it as 'no longer available to order'. A few still lists it 'in stock' though (Play for instance).

[MichaelB]

Just in case anyone still want Tartan's 30-disc Ingmar Bergman Collection:
I assume it's soon OOP. Most UK retailers (Bensons World, Choices, Sendit, 101CD, Dvd.co.uk etc.) lists it as 'no longer available to order'. A few still lists it 'in stock' though (Play for instance).

I think it was only a limited edition of 1,000 copies - I bought mine within days of Bergman's death when for some unknown reason the price plunged on Amazon to less than half the original RRP.

(Still haven't found the time to watch any of it, though!)

[the virgin spring]

Persona will be screened in Chicago on February 1st, followed by a lecture/discussion.

[alfons416]

In Göteborg, Sweden (as part of Göteborg International Film Festival) right now we're having one of the largest Ingmar Bergman retrospectives ever. 48 feature length films (all directed by bergman, no script only films) including many rarely seen films for TV, below are all the films in chronological order (with some of the rarely seen ones bolded)

Kris
Det regnar på vår kärlek
Skepp till india land
Musik i mörker
Hamnstad
Fängelse
Törst
Till glädje
Sånt händer inte här
Sommarlek
Kvinnors väntan
Sommaren med monika
Gycklarnas afton
En lektion i kärlek
Kvinnodröm
Sommarnattens leende
Det sjunde Inseglet
Smultronstället
Nära livet
Rabies
Ansiktet
Jungfrukällan
Djävulens öga
Oväder
SÃ¥som i en spegel
Nattvardsgästerna
Tystnaden
Ett Drömspel
För att inte tala om alla dessa kvinnor
Persona
Vargtimmen
Skammen
Riten
En passion
Viskningar och rop
Scener ur ett äktenskap (The TV-version)
Trollflöjten
Ansikte mot ansikte
The Serpent's Egg
Höstsonaten
Fårödokument 1979
Aus dem Leben der Marionetten
Fanny och Alexander
Hustruskolan
Efter repetitionen
De två saliga
Larmar sig och gör sig till
Saraband

More info here

BTW, does anyone know if Larmar och gör sig till/In the pressence of a clown is shot on 35mm film or if it's made with TV-techniques?

[Lino]

Start saving your hard-earned money: Taschen are at it again.

[HelenLawson]

Start saving your hard-earned money: Taschen are at it again.

Well, since I take public transportation and don't pay mortgage on a home, I'll definitely be buying this. I'm looking forward to the photos and excerpts devoted to his theater productions since so much of that is unpublished relative to his film work.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I wish something would be done with Face to Face. I've read about half the script, as I've got a copy of Ingmar Bergman's Marriage Scenarios* here with me at home, and it's actually sort of mediocre. I think he says somewhere that he doesn't care for either it or Autumn Sonata, as he believed both were examples of "Bergman doing Bergman", in the sense that he'd fallen into a set style (something he didn't want to do). Nonetheless, a Criterion of it wouldn't be half bad.

*...which includes Scenes From A Marriage, Face To Face, and Autumn Sonata. I got it used on Amazon, and it's really great.

[MichaelB]

I'm looking forward to the photos and excerpts devoted to his theater productions since so much of that is unpublished relative to his film work.

Talking of which, has anyone seen all three parts of Marie Nyreröd's documentary on Bergman? BBC4 only showed the ones about the life and the films, not the theatre work, presumably because they thought there would be little interest. But the complete set is out on DVD (Beaver), and I was wondering if anyone could recommend it?

[Galen Young]

...and I was wondering if anyone could recommend it?

I did -- back when it came out, in this thread. I unequivocally recommend it if you're a student of Bergman, as I am. Sad to say I never got to see a Bergman stage production, though I know BAM in New York was bringing him over every once in a while. (god it kills me that I missed Gunnel Lindblom live in stage production of Bergman's in NYC -- anybody here catch one of those shows?) As I love every page of the Kubrick Archive, sight of this new Taschen book on Bergman has me walking on air!

[MichaelB]

I had the chance to catch a 1987 production of Hamlet that came to London, but I missed it because:

(a) I assumed it would have sold out (everything else in that season - a National Theatre-mounted quartet of plays by major international directors - sold out within minutes);
(b) it clashed directly with the 1987 General Election.

I only found out later that because of (b) there were actually plenty of tickets available. And quite why I favoured watching Margaret Thatcher being elected to a third term (an experience more wrist-slittingly depressing than anything in Bergman's entire oeuvre, and scarcely a surprise in any case), I'll never know!