News

"Here comes my family." The BFI in the UK has revealed a new trailer for the 40th anniversary re-release of the acclaimed 1982 Ingmar Bergman film Fanny and Alexander, a Christmas classic from Sweden. The three-hour long saga of family and humanity first opened in Sweden in 1982, before arriving in US theaters in 1983. Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies & tragedies of their lively and affectionate family, the Ekdahls. "Although Bergman is as attuned as ever to the anguish of life, there is also much that is fondly recalled, from toy theatres and magic lantern shows to family Christmases and favoured relatives." Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander to be his final film before retiring, and his script is semi-autobiographical. It won four Academy Awards when it first opened. The film stars Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Jan Malmsjö, Börje Ahlstedt, Anna Bergman, Gunn Wållgren, Erland Josephson, Mats Bergman,...

On July 14, 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, Ingmar Bergman was born, and a quarter-century later, he began to bring his cinematic voice to the world. A century after his brith, with an astounding body of work like few other directors and an influence that reverberates through the past many decades of filmmaking, his filmography is being celebrated like never before.

Starting this February at NYC’s Film Forum and then expanding throughout the nation “the largest jubilee of a single filmmaker” will be underway in a massive, 47-film retrospective. Featuring 35 new restorations, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and many, many more, Janus Films has now debuted a beautiful trailer alongside the full line-up of films.

The Ingmar Bergman retrospective begins on February 7 at NYC’s Film Forum and then will expand to the following cities this spring:

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Wa

Detroit Film Theatre,...

'Fanny and Alexander' movie: Ingmar Bergman classic with Bertil Guve as Alexander Ekdahl 'Fanny and Alexander' movie review: Last Ingmar Bergman 'filmic film' Why Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander / Fanny och Alexander bears its appellation is a mystery – one of many in the director's final 'filmic film' – since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character. In fact, in the three-hour theatrical version she is not even mentioned by name for nearly an hour into the film. Fanny and Alexander should have been called "Alexander and Fanny," or simply "Alexander," since it most closely follows two years – from 1907 to 1909 – in the life of young, handsome, brown-haired Alexander Ekdahl (Bertil Guve), the original "boy who sees dead people." Better yet, it should have been called "The Ekdahls," for that whole family is central to the film, especially Fanny and Alexander's beautiful blonde mother Emilie,...

Oscar-winning Danish director of Babette's Feast

In April 1988, a week before his 70th birthday, the film director Gabriel Axel, who has died aged 95, walked up on stage at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles to receive the best foreign language film Oscar for Babette's Feast (1987), the first Danish movie to achieve that honour. In a mixture of Danish and French, the slim, grey-bearded, bespectacled Axel quoted a line from the character of the General in the film: "Because of this evening, I have learned, my dear, that in this beautiful world of ours, all things are possible."

It was the pinnacle of Axel's long career and marked the beginning of a resurgence of Danish cinema. (Another Danish film, Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror, won the foreign language Oscar the following year.) Despite several fine films, there was previously little in Axel's oeuvre to predict the perfection of Babette's Feast.

The title Babette's Feast doesn't immediately jump out at me as a film I need to see immediately, but to know this Danish film bested Au Revoir Les Enfants (read my Blu-ray review here) at the 1988 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film certainly causes me to change my mind. While I wouldn't say director Gabriel Axel's film is better than Malle's Enfants, which is a personal all-timer of mine, but it is a multi-layered story with drama in corners you can't expect heading in. Adapted from the 1950 short story of the same name (read it here) by Karen Blixen (writing as Isak Denisen who also wrote the story that inspired Out of Africa), the film takes place in a small village in 19th century Denmark, a town Denisen described as a "child's toy-town of little wooden pieces". The story centers on two sisters who grew up here under the watchful eye of their father,...

Ingmar Bergman is one of the most respected names in cinema, which comes with a price. When in The Seventh Seal he had a knight and the embodiment of death play a chess game, he unfortunately crystallized what Americans feared was the nature of “Foreign Films.” They seemed pretentious and humorless, about suffering and existentialism. So it’s understandable if the body of work is approached with some hesitation. But – though it starts slowly – Fanny and Alexander, his 1982 farewell to directing cinema, begins with a Christmas celebration that features sex and fart jokes. Seriously, jokes plural. Our review of Criterion’s Blu-ray of Fanny and Alexander follows after the jump. Bertil Guve stars as Alexander Ekdahl, His parents act and run the local theater, and as the film begins they are finishing their Christmas show and going to dinner with the matriarch of their family Helena (Gunn Wallgren). There we meet the family.

When I first heard Criterion would start releasing titles from their Collection onto Blu-ray I thought of several of their highest profile films that I would love to see and own in high definition. Obvious titles such as Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Bergman's Seventh Seal, Godard's Breathless, Fellini's 8 1/2 and several others, most of which (including all four I just mentioned) are already available on Criterion Blu-ray. Now you can add one more that immediately came to mind... Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, the prolific director's final feature film and one hell of a film at that. If you're a fan of Bergman's work you simply must own this film as it has everything you've ever found intriguing in the director's work all wrapped into one master opus. While the Criterion jacket calls it the director's "warmest" film there is still plenty of darkness to be explored as the story of...

I'm a big Ingmar Bergman fan and for that reason alone I enjoyed Smiles of a Summer Night. With some directors you just feel a connection, you get their jokes, you share similar wonders and question the same things. I love his approach to religion and questions of mortality. However, this film doesn't really deal with much of that at all, which is probably the reason I merely liked it and wouldn't necessarily suggest it as a must buy. Though, for Bergman fans, it's certainly one to add to your collection.

While described as "one of cinema's great erotic comedies" by Criterion, that's a bit misleading, especially for today's audiences. Perhaps it would be more properly worded as "quietly" erotic and "subtly" funny. You won't be laughing out loud, at least not very often, and while Harriet Andersson (Through a Glass Darkly), Eva Dahlbeck and even the pregnant (but hiding...

When looking at the careers of legendary directors, writers and actors in retrospect, it can be interesting to analyze just what path they took before reaching greatness. Today, Ingmar Bergman is internationally known as one of the great auteurs of all time. But while he was already an established director for nine years in his native Sweden, it was not until his fifteenth film as director that Bergman achieved international acclaim in 1955. That film was Smiles of a Summer Night. Hit the jump for my review. Smiles of a Summer Night introduced viewers to the comic side of Bergman in a tale of four men and four women trying to find their true love in a mix of complex interconnected relationships. Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Björnstrand) is an older lawyer married to a teenaged wife, Anne (Ulla Jacobsson) with whom he has never consummated. In his younger days Fredrik had an...

Although Stormare is uncredited in the film, his association with one of the greatest film directors of all time has had many claiming that it was Ingmar Bergman who discovered our list’s subject. Certainly, having had even a little to do with “Fanny and Alexander,” a foreign-language film that managed to win four Oscars from six nominations, did nothing but help launch Stormare’s career in the U.S. and cement him as a screen actor away from his first home on the stage.

Choice Quotation:

Gustav Adolf Ekdahl (Jarl Kulle): Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

10 Best Peter Stormare Movies: #9 >>

<< 10 Best Peter Stormare Movies: Introduction...

Although Stormare is uncredited in the film, his association with one of the greatest film directors of all time has had many claiming that it was Ingmar Bergman who discovered our list’s subject. Certainly, having had even a little to do with “Fanny and Alexander,” a foreign-language film that managed to win four Oscars from six nominations, did nothing but help launch Stormare’s career in the U.S. and cement him as a screen actor away from his first home on the stage.

Choice Quotation:

Gustav Adolf Ekdahl (Jarl Kulle): Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

10 Best Peter Stormare Movies: #9 >>

<< 10 Best Peter Stormare Movies: Introduction...

Fanny Och Alexander / Fanny And Alexander (1982) Direction and Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman Cast: Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, Ewa Fröling, Börje Ahlstedt, Jan Malmsjö, Allan Edwall, Gunn Wållgren, Jarl Kulle , Erland Josephson, Pernilla August, Harriet Andersson, Stina Ekblad, Mats Bergman, Gunnar Björnstrand, Lena Olin Oscar Movies Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Fanny and Alexander By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: Why Ingmar Bergman's final 'filmic film,' Fanny och Alexander / Fanny and Alexander (1982) bears its appellation is a mystery — one of many in the film — since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character. In fact, in the three-hour theatrical version she is not even mentioned by name for nearly an hour into the film. Fanny and Alexander should have been called "Alexander and Fanny," or simply "Alexander," since it most closely follows two years in the life of young, handsome, brown-haired [...]...