Shame

Directed by Ingmar Bergman, Shame (Skammen) is at once an examination of the violent legacy of World War II and a scathing response to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann star as musicians living in quiet retreat on a remote island farm, until the civil war that drove them from the city catches up with them there. Amid the chaos of the military struggle, vividly evoked by pyrotechnics and by cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s handheld camera work, the two are faced with impossible moral choices that tear at the fabric of their relationship. This film, which contains some of the most devastating scenes in Bergman’s oeuvre, shows the impact of war on individual lives.

Film Info

  • Sweden
  • 1968
  • 103 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • Swedish
  • Spine #961

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Interviews with director Ingmar Bergman and a brief excerpt from a press conference for the film, recorded in 1967 and ’68 for Swedish television
  • New interview with actor Liv Ullmann
  • An Introduction to Ingmar Bergman, a 1968 documentary made during the film’s production, featuring an extensive interview with Bergman
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Sragow

New cover by Anthony Gerace

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Blu-ray Box Set

30 Discs

$239.96

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Interviews with director Ingmar Bergman and a brief excerpt from a press conference for the film, recorded in 1967 and ’68 for Swedish television
  • New interview with actor Liv Ullmann
  • An Introduction to Ingmar Bergman, a 1968 documentary made during the film’s production, featuring an extensive interview with Bergman
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Sragow

New cover by Anthony Gerace

Shame
Cast
Liv Ullmann
Eva Rosenberg
Max von Sydow
Jan Rosenberg
Sigge Fürst
Filip
Gunnar Björnstrand
Jacobi
Birgitta Valberg
Mrs. Jacobi
Hans Alfredson
Lobelius
Ingvar Kjellson
Oswald
Frank Sundström
Chief interrogator
Ulf Johansson
The doctor
Vilgot Sjöman
The interviewer
Bengt Eklund
Guard
Gösta Prüzelius
The vicar
Barbro Hiort af Ornäs
Woman in the boat
Credits
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography
Sven Nykvist
Editor
Ulla Ryghe
Art direction
P. A. Lundgren
Production manager
Lars-Owe Carlberg
Sound
Lennart Engholm
Costume design
Mago
Hair and makeup
Börje Lundh
Script continuity
Faragó Katinka
Military adviser
Lennart Bergqvist
Military adviser
Stig Lindberg
Sound effects
Evald Andersson

Current

Liv Ullmann Recalls “Shattering” Moments on the Set of Shame
Liv Ullmann Recalls “Shattering” Moments on the Set of Shame

While working on Ingmar Bergman’s devastating antiwar film, the actress developed an emotionally intense chemistry with her costar Max von Sydow.

Shame: Twilight of the Humans
Shame: Twilight of the Humans

In 1968, Ingmar Bergman channeled his anguish over the legacy of World War II and the escalating brutality in Vietnam into the most fiercely political film of his career.

By Michael Sragow

Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, Sisters in the Art

Ingmar’s Actors

Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, Sisters in the Art

The powerhouse actors at the center of Persona became two of Ingmar Bergman’s most essential collaborators, bringing a remarkable emotional range to their performances.

Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman’s Creative Marriage
Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman’s Creative Marriage

“We make each other alive; it doesn’t make a difference if it hurts,” Bergman once wrote to Ullmann—and that emotional intensity gave fuel to their extraordinary forty-year collaboration.

Explore

Ingmar Bergman

Director

Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

The Swedish auteur began his artistic career in the theater but eventually navigated toward film—"the great adventure," as he called it—initially as a screenwriter and then as a director. Simply put, in the fifties and sixties, the name Ingmar Bergman was synonymous with European art cinema. Yet his incredible run of successes in that era—including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, haunting black-and-white elegies on the nature of God and death—merely paved the way for a long and continuously dazzling career that would take him from the daring “Silence of God” trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) to the existential terrors of Cries and Whispers to the family epic Fanny and Alexander, with which he “retired” from the cinema. Bergman died in July 2007, leaving behind one of the richest bodies of work in the history of cinema.