Sonate d'automne

Autumn Sonata was a movie that did move me a lot, but I'd hesitate in calling it one of Ingmar Bergman's best. I did find The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, Cries and Whispers and Persona even better. This said, apart from an occasional over-load of speeches that come across as too theatrical, Autumn Sonata is still a remarkably good film. As ever with Bergman, it is wonderfully photographed(by none other than Sven Nykvist) and directed, and it has some lovely scenery too. The music is beautiful and haunting, I have to say as a life-long fan of classical music that the use of the Chopin prelude is one of the finest uses of classical music in film to me. The script is mostly thought-provoking and the story, which is essentially a study of guarded emotion, resentment and regret, has the Bergman darkness and harrowing moments like with the sister with the horrible degenerative disease and the drowned toddler. Charlotte's selfishness is also very powerfully conveyed as is Eva's sense of resentment, while the scene that moved me most was the two at the piano. Both leading ladies are outstanding, Ingrid Bergman's elegant but somewhat faded beauty is ideal for the selfishness of her character, but I was even more impressed by Liv Ullman, who has such intensity in her eyes and facial expressions. All in all, powerful and moving, and while it is not one of my favourites from Bergman it is still highly recommendable. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This is a beautiful and devastating film that I admire, love and am connected to. This was the first Liv Ullmann's film I've seen and the first Bergman's color film. It is considered to be Ingrid Bergman's film and she is phenomenal as a talented and world renowned pianist who had never been a good mother to her two daughters. It is much easier to make the whole world happy then your own child. One can be a brilliant artist and read the minds of the other great minds easily but the hearts and souls of one's own blood and flesh would be the unsolved mystery. I think the film was very personal for both Bergmans in their only work together. It is amazing how bravely they explore the themes and events that could've (and did) occurred in their own lives. For me, though, the film belongs to Liv Ullmann, the greatest actress I've seen, the best Ingmar Bergman's actress.

I was riveted to Liv's face; I'd never seen the face like hers. She played a plain daughter to the brilliant mother and she was supposed to look and feel awkward and gawky comparing to her mother but her face was like a magnet, her eyes - like two deep blue lakes. If ever the saying, the eyes are the soul's mirror, is true, it is about Liv's eyes. There are kindness, tenderness, strength, and something even more attractive than beauty itself in them - the goodness of her soul. Dostoyevsky said once that human face has to mean something - I always think of his words when I see performance of my favorite actress ever -Liv Ullmann.

What makes a movie perfect is not only the intensity of emotion you feel when seeing it, and it's not only the seamless matching of technique and artistry, it is the truth of feeling conveyed and the unrelenting attention to the details of the crafts of writing, acting, and directing, making certain that those details work together to create meaning - a view of life, and whatever forces are behind life, that are as varied, contradictory, and complete as a living being. It is this that Bergman managed to accomplish with AUTUMN SONATA. The hyperbolic use of the word 'perfect', too often spontaneously tossed out as a result of confused and mawkish sentimentality (just as one Liv Ulmann's interpretation of a Chopin prelude is described as mawkish in the film) has a right to be used in the case of this work. There are no demons or angels in this movie. There are a collection of remarkably real characters whose actions and their motivations are fully explained by themselves, in dialog that is explicit and direct but not delivered as an artificial way of getting across the creator's judgment on his characters. Ingrid Bergman, in what is doubtlessly the finest performance of her career, portrays a mother who has neglected her children all her life and is confronted by this fact by her grown daughter whose adoration as a child has turned into an apparently irreversible hatred. "There is no forgiveness" is a line uttered by Liv Ulmann after summarizing the crimes of her mother's neglect and the results of that neglect. And yet, the character's contradictory feelings are clearly seen in the moments when her need for vengeful expression of her pain has faded away. The daughter who has condemned her mother, quite honestly, wants to keep trying to resolve the conflict, to heal the gaping wounds in her heart and in her sister's heart - a sister who, arguably, has been physically crippled by the cold withdrawl of her mother's feelings and her mother's competitive need to be the leading female character in everyone's life. Ingrid Bergman's character, though seen as a villain in the emotional eyes of her daughter, comes across as complex as Ulmann's. She has an awareness of her crimes of neglect but remains helpless, by choice and by need, to confront them within herself and make amends to resolve them. Her own childhood is the reason. The isolation that she felt, instead of inspiring her to not repeat the mistake with her own children, took the course of isolation, of seeking praise from the outside, of being the central character in the lives of people around her. Her insatiable hunger for love from others, though, remains forever unsatisfied. Her selfishness, even though she is painfully aware of it, is something which she has learned how to hide from herself. Her methods, of physical distance or the perfection of her work as a pianist has, for all her adult life, successfully obfuscated her pain - until an all-night exposing of the naked truths of hurt and distrust that are thrust upon her by her daughter.

Anyone with a mother or father can find identification with the characters in AUTUMN SONATA, as long as they can tolerate the pain of the truth that lies at the center of their all-too-human needs and the hurtful action that those needs have caused.

This is one of the very best Ingmar Bergman films I have seen, and therefore one of the very best films.

Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullman are simply amazing together as a mother and daughter combination from hell. Ingrid Bergman is terrific, despite a deliberately naff hairdo which makes her look like Queen Elizabeth II of the UK rather than the faded beauty she is. Liv Ullman also has visual nuances to enhance her character - the glasses, platted hair and jumpers enabling this beautiful woman to look frumpy.

The acting is simply amazing, even through the subtitles you can tell. Fortunately Scandinavian vocal nuance is similar enough to English to enable us non-Swedish speakers to appreciate the acting.

Of course, it has the Ingmar Bergman darkness to it. The sister with the horrible degenerative disease, the drowned toddler, the selfishness of the Ingrid Bergman character. If you get depressed along with the characters in films like this, you might be better off giving this one a miss.

But for those with a taste for this type of claustrophobic drama, this is one of the most powerful films you will ever see.

ingrid berman was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly before she agreed to star in this film. due to the fact that insurance companies in hollywood rarely secure contracts with ill actors, ingrid had to take what she could while she was still alive. i don't know what her financial situation was at the time, but i do know that her fee for starring in this film was much less than she was used to. yet, despite her condition, this became, to me at least, her swan-song performance.

during ingrid's prime, she had considerable control of her image in hollywood. she was portrayed, more often than not, as a strong and goddess-like character (casablanca, anyone?). in this film, however, all control of imaging was in the hands of her swedish counterparts ingmar bergman and sven nykvist, and the image they created of her was deconstructive of her screen persona, yet not in her brilliance and ability as an actress.

ingrid hated working with them, though. ingmar would command long takes, and sven would put the camera inches from her face. yet this technique showed a side of ingrid the world has never seen before.

ingrid's character,charlotte, is a successful concert pianist yet unsuccessful mother who returns to see her two daughters and a son-in-law. one daughter is married, yet is incapable of feeling love. and the other (helena, played by 60's swedish film star lena nyman) is left virtually paralyzed. she returns to visit after 7 years, and that's when the sparks fly.

liv ullman, who plays eva, (the married daughter), has usually been portayed as a non-confrontational person in her collaborations with ingmar, yet her persona in this film is slightly reserved in the beginning, but all her inhibitions are unleashed upon charlotte. i've always remembered ingrid as a beautiful painted rose on the screen (for whom the bell tolls, anyone?), but when this film ends, all we see is ingrid's tear-stained face. this may be ingmar's own reaction to his own short-comings as a husband and father (7 kids/4 marriages). in an effort to deconstruct himself, he looked at another icon to drive home his point of childhood pain and adult insecurities.

at this films end, the most punishing scenes occur. i'm not going to spoil it for you, but it's the scene when eva walks amongst cemetery headstones while charlotte takes the train out of town. i hate to admit it, but there was a lump in my throat at this point in the film.

although i praise this film, i wouldn't give this movie a 10 because of nyman's character. although her scene in the beginning is powerful, her other two appearances,(although brief) are way over-the-top, almost as bad as jar-jar binks in phantom menace.

i could write more, but i want everyone who reads this to go see this movie without my crappy opinions ruining it. it's not often that people see a film with such realistic portrrait of the human condition. and as i said earlier, ingrid and ignmar have rarely (maybe never)been better.

9 out of 10 (***1/2 out of ****)