Swedish

Anita - The Shocking Account of a Young Nymphomaniac

A young girl named Anita (Lindberg) suffers from psychological problems and sexual promiscuity due to her troubled childhood and uncaring parents. She meets Erik (Skarsg rd) a student at a local university who tries to help her through her troubles by analyzing her past relationships. After revealing her most intimate and violent encounters to Erik he determines that in order for her to overcome her nymphomania she first must experience a true orgasm! ANITA is a classic of controversial Swedish exploitation starring cult film starlet Christina Lindberg (THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE) and a very young Stellan Skarsg rd (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD S END) in one of his first ever film roles!Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 654930100493 Manufacturer No: 493

The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection

Ingmar Bergman's 1956 film has been parodied by everyone from Woody Allen to Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, but it remains one of the strangest and richest classics of world cinema. Max Von Sydow plays a knight returning from the Crusades to encounter an apocalyptic scenario inspired by the Book of Genesis. He plays chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot), sees a manacled witch, watches a band of flagellants go by--all of it foretelling an inevitable end to life. Unabashedly allegorical and lyrical and existing in a world unto itself, the film is enormously mesmerizing no matter what one thinks of the weighty meanings Bergman has attached to it all. The DVD release has English subtitles, audio commentary by critic Peter Cowie, theatrical trailer, and Bergman's filmography. --Tom Keogh

After a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight challenges Death to a fateful game of chess. More than forty years after its initial release, Ingmar Bergman's stunning allegory of man's apocalyptic search for meaning remains a textbook on the art of filmmaking and an essential building block in any collection. Criterion is proud to present The Seventh Seal in a pristine new transfer.

Ingmar Bergman - Four Masterworks (Criterion Collection)

The late Swedish master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman rose to international stardom in the 1950s. Here together in one box set are four of his most cherished unforgettable masterpiecesSystem Requirements:Run time: 384 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/BIOGRAPHY Rating: NR UPC: 715515027625 Manufacturer No: CC1735DDVD

The Magic Flute - Criterion Collection

Ingmar Bergman's vision of The Magic Flute (sung here in Swedish) remains one of the indisputable classics in the opera-as-film catalog, its charm and enchantment undiminished since the film's initial release in the 1970s. This is a case not of competition between two geniuses (and two media) but of affirmative, graceful, and enlightening synergy. Instead of simply filming a staged run-through of the opera, Bergman chooses to play with the framework around such a performance (given in Stockholm's elegant Drottningholm Theatre)--and he moreover rearranges the order of the scenes in the final act. Intermittent shots of audience reactions--including those of a young girl infectiously involved in the story--and sudden, psychologically probing close-up angles result in a richly textured, multilayered effect.

Certainly Bergman renders the fairy-tale aspects of Mozart's mise-en-scène with such buoyant detail that the film makes an excellent entrée both for youngsters and for anyone who is uneasy about how to approach an opera. Yet there is much food for thought to be savored by the already initiated as well. One of Bergman's more brilliant interventions is to depict Sarastro and the Queen of the Night as a divorced couple engaged in a bitter battle over daughter Pamina. The director supplies plenty of energetic wit and arabesques of allusion (in addition to his Prospero-like demeanor, the high priest Sarastro is shown at one point during the intermission perusing the score of Parsifal), and--as might be expected of one of film's greatest symbolists--teases out the opera's weightier allegorical levels with hauntingly beautiful effect. Brilliant chiaroscuro and contrasted lighting patterns, for example, offer ongoing visual commentary on the contest between darkness and light. The cast is exceptionally photogenic, their abundant youth and obvious chemistry more than compensating for the often no-more-than-mediocre vocal performances (with the exception of Håkan Hagegård's utterly disarming, still-fresh portrayal of Papageno). For a desert-island audio recording, try Thomas Beecham. --Thomas May

Ingmar Bergman puts his indelible stamp on Mozart's exquisite opera in this sublime rendering of one of the composer's best-loved works: a celebration of love, forgiveness, and the brotherhood of man. The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten) stars Josef Köstlinger as Tamino, the young man determined to rescue a beautiful princess from the clutches of parental evil. Criterion's edition features the film's glorious soundtrack in the original stereo format.

Kitchen Stories

A Swedish researcher strikes up an unlikely friendship with a cranky Norwegian farmer in this "quirky thoughtful and bittersweet" (Boxoffice) comedy that captured audiences' hearts around the world. Both "warm" (Newsday) and witty Kitchen Stories is "a deadpan thoroughly delightful comedy that cooks up tasty laughs" (New York Post)!It's thei1950s and a Swedish efficiency expert under strict orders not to interact with his subject is sent to improve a Norwegian farmer's culinary efforts. But the sly old farmer much prefers to amuse himself by impeding the timid researcher's work! Soon in the struggle between neutral observation and the need for human interaction the kitchen becomes a battleground!System Requirements: Running Time 95 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG UPC: 027616919571 Manufacturer No: 1007910

Wild Strawberries - Criterion Collection

An elderly college professor sets out in his car to receive an honorary degree--and takes a trip instead through his own past and subconscious--in this bittersweet but ultimately tender and understanding 1957 film by Swedish master Ingmar Bergman. Casting Swedish star Victor Sjöström in the lead, Bergman, then at the height of his powers as an international filmmaker, uses flashbacks and bright, lyrical storytelling to capture the full arc of one man's life: the successes that seem fleeting, the disappointments that linger in the memory, the regrets that never seem to let go. In some ways, it can be seen as a forerunner of Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, except that Bergman's sense of irony is always more profound. --Marshall Fine

The film that catapulted Bergman to the forefront of world cinema is the director's richest, most humane movie. Traveling to receive an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg (masterfully played by the veteran Swedish director Victor Sjöström), is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and accept the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, Wild Strawberries captures a startling voyage of self-discovery and renewed belief in mankind.

Avant Garde - Experimental Cinema of the 1920s & 1930s

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman - Criterion Collection (Through a Glass Darkly/Winter Light/The Silence)

Between 1961 and 1963, Ingmar Bergman released a remarkable trilogy of so-called chamber dramas, each one concerned with the futility of sustaining faith in God, family, love, or much else. The series proved transitional for the internationally renowned Swedish filmmaker, securing his crucial collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist (with whom Bergman would go on to make his many masterpieces--including Persona and Cries and Whispers--of the '60s, '70s, and early '80s), and underscoring a new preference for intimate, relationship-driven stories, austere settings, and haunting tones of emotional isolation and despair.

Through a Glass Darkly concerns a psychologically fragile woman, Karin (Harriet Andersson), who seeks recovery from a nervous breakdown while on a remote-island vacation with her family. Unfortunately, her father (Gunnar Björnstrand), a successful writer, regards her with clinical detachment, her husband (Max Von Sydow), a doctor, feels unavailing in the effort to treat her, and her brother (Lars Passgard) is wrapped up in his own quest for sexual fulfillment. Karin's descent into further loneliness and delusion exacerbates the heretofore unspoken alienation at the heart of this entire family, and drives the characters to brood over the existence of God (or, in Karin's case, imagine that God is the chilling spider hidden behind an attic door). Through a Glass Darkly is a heartbreaking, powerful work of art.

Winter Light reunites Björnstrand, this time playing a pastor suffering a crisis of faith while ministering to a shrinking congregation, and Von Sydow as a parishioner lost to acute anxiety over the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Neither man can help or heal the other, or even inspire renewed confidence in practiced rituals and older, more certain views of the world. Set on a chilly, Sunday afternoon, Winter Light's heavy stillness, lack of music, preference for intense close-ups and distancing long shots, and barren setting all lead us inescapably into the core of a profound silence, an echo chamber in which love can't grow and religion rings hollow.

The Silence is the most abstract entry in the trilogy, a somewhat eerie story of two sisters, Esther (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), and the latter's son (Jörgen Lindström), all traveling by train to Sweden but forced to stay in a foreign country when Esther's chronic bronchial problems require her to rest. A stifling atmosphere, a desolate hotel, encounters with a troupe of carnival dwarves, Anna's anchoring illness, and an empty sexual encounter for Esther underscore the unnerving feeling that God has abandoned these characters to dubious salvation in their own connection. A highly memorable film. --Tom Keogh

At the beginning of the 1960s, renowned film director Ingmar Bergman began work on what were to become some of his most powerful and representative works—the Trilogy. Already a figure of tremendous international acclaim for such masterworks as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, Bergman turned his back on the abundant symbolism and exotic imagery of his `50s work to focus on a series of impacted, emotionally explosive chamber dramas examining faith and alienation in the modern age. Utilizing a new cameraman—the incomparable Sven Nykvist—Bergman unleashed Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence in rapid succession, exposing moviegoers worldwide to a new level of intellectual and emotional intensity. Each film employs minimal dialogue, eerily isolated settings, and searing performances from such Bergman regulars as Max von Sydow, Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom in their evocation of a desperate world confronted with God's desertion. Drawing on Bergman's own severely religious upbringing and ensuing spiritual crisis, the films in the Trilogy are deeply personal, challenging, and enriching works that exhibit the filmmaker's peerless formal mastery and fierce intelligence. The Criterion Collection is proud to present The Ingmar Bergman Trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence.

Scenes From a Marriage - Criterion Collection

Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage opens with a couple--Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson)--being interviewed for a magazine. Every moment seems to teeter on the brink of some rupture; just as they start to get comfortable, the interviewer has them freeze for a photograph. After making some bland general statements, they both start admitting intimate details, confessing that they were brought together by mutual misery, then cheerfully claiming that theirs is a model marriage. The entirety of Scenes from a Marriage, which chronicles their emotional relationship even after their divorce and marriages to other people, continues to have these contradictory moments of honesty and self-deception, cruelty and kindness, concern and self-obsession--all laid bare by the skillful actors and the subtle, constantly shifting screenplay. Every scene is a small movie unto itself; in fact, Scenes from a Marriage was originally a six-episode TV show, which was carefully edited down into a unified film. This is one of Bergman's most immediate and accessible works, concerned more with the facts of human behavior than symbolism or abstract themes. Bergman understands how to balance what could be horrible pain and despair with the characters' earnest efforts to improve their lives. His imitators reduce everything to sheer suffering and alienation; Bergman sees the best in his characters, even when their actions are terrible. This 1973 film won numerous awards, including several acting honors for Ullmann. --Bret Fetzer

Marianne (Liv Ullman) and Johan (Erland Josephson) always seemed like the perfect couple. But when Johan suddenly leaves Marianne for another woman, they are forced to confront the disintegration of their marriage. Shot in intense, intimate close-ups by master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, the film chronicles ten years of turmoil and love that bind the couple despite their divorce and subsequent marriages. Flawless acting and dialogue portray the brutal pain and uplifting peace that accompany a lifetime of loving. Originally conceived as a six-part miniseries for Swedish television, The Criterion Collection is proud to present not only the U.S. theatrical version, but also, for the first time on video in the U.S., Ingmar Bergman's original five-hour television version of Scenes From a Marriage.

Storm

Gut-punching action gory murders and Matrix-style special effects await you in the ultimate thrill ride that will leave you on the edge-of-your seat! Donny is a slacker whose life takes a terrifying turn when a fiery haired woman enters his life possessing a box which may hold the answers to human existence. Plunged into a harrowing adventure the pair travel through time and fight off dangerous assassins bent on claiming the mysterious object. But time is running out for Donny and soon he caught in the battle between good and evil leaving the future of mankind in his bloody hands.System Requirements:Running Time: 110 minutes Language: Swedish / English Subtitles: EnglishFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS UPC: 807839003338 Manufacturer No: TLAD191