![]() Two films from 1968 are also featured here, “ Hour of the Wolf” and “ Shame.” Ebert awarded “Wolf” three stars, writing, “Much of the film retains Bergman’s ability to obtain deeply emotional results with very stark, almost objective, scenes. ![]() Here is a movie about people who have lived so long, hell has not been able to wait for them.” If we are bitter now, we will not be victorious later we will still be bitter. Whatever else he is telling us in ‘Saraband,’ Bergman is telling is that life will end on the terms with which we have lived it. Thirty-two years have passed since ‘Scenes from a Marriage.’ The years have passed for Bergman, for Ullmann, for Josephson, and for us. “The movie is not about the resolution of this plot,” wrote Ebert in his four-star review. “It is about the way people persist in creating misery by placing the demands of their egos above the need for happiness - their own happiness, and that of those around them. The overwhelming fact about this movie is its awareness of time. Included along with it is Bergman’s final film, 2005’s “ Saraband,” revisiting the same couple decades later. Beyond love, beyond marriage, beyond the selfishness that destroys love, beyond the centrifugal force that sends egos whirling away from each other and prevents enduring relationships–beyond all these things, there still remains what we know of each other, that we care about each other, that in twenty years these people have touched and known so deeply that they still remember, and still need.” They will fight and curse each other, and it will be a wicked divorce, but in some fundamental way they have touched, really touched, and the memory of that touching will be something to hold to all of their days. Headlining the Centerpiece One section of the box set are the television and theatrical versions of 1974’s “ Scenes from a Marriage,” a masterwork that Ebert dubbed, “one of the truest, most luminous love stories ever made.” In his four-star review, Roger wrote, “The marriage of Johan and Marianne will disintegrate soon after the film begins, but their love will not. Perhaps here, in an uncharacteristic comedy, Bergman is expressing the same need.” Accompanying this film in this first section of the box set are 1946’s “ Crisis,” 1947’s “ A Ship to India,” 1950’s “ To Joy,” 1951’s “ Summer Interlude,” 1953’s “ Summer with Monika,” 1954’s “ A Lesson in Love,” 1955’s “ Dreams” and 1957’s famous “ Wild Strawberries.” Scenes from a Marriage There is an abundance of passion here, but none of it reckless the characters consider the moral weight of their actions, and while not reluctant to misbehave, feel a need to explain, if only to themselves. ![]() ![]() ![]() “We are meant to understand that everyone’s sensibilities are erotically alert because it is one of those endless northern days where night is but a finger dragging the dusk between one day and the next,” wrote Ebert. “What happens during the course of the long night involves smiles and a great deal more, including a providential bed that slides through a wall from one bedroom to the next. The film also showcased Bergman’s under-appreciated sense of humor. In his Great Movies essay, Ebert detailed how the Swedish Film Institute took a gamble by spending $100,000 on the film (the largest ever for a Swedish movie up till that time), and it paid off spectacularly, becoming an international success and preventing the director from ever having to “scramble for financing” again in his career. Serving as the opening night selection of the box set in 1955’s “ Smiles of a Summer Night,” a film that “acted as an artistic and professional turning point” for the filmmaker, according to Ebert. ![]()
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