Smiles of a Summer Night

Jul 17, 2015 — As visually and sociopolitically expansive as it is intimate in its details of a boy’s coming of age, Jan Troell’s film is one of the great cinematic debuts.

Oct 12, 2010 — Ingmar Bergman’s Ansiktet (1958)—the title literally translates as The Face, though in North America it was released as The Magician—is arguably one of his most underrated achievements. Its undeservedly lowly standing may perhaps be attributed to its chronological position in...

Jul 16, 2008 — The locations for many of Ingmar Bergman’s most dramatically spare films have existed for so long in moviegoers’ minds as stark black-and-white dream states that to walk through them in living, vibrant color is truly transformative. Imagine the harsh, pebbled...

Jan 21, 2008 — As late as 1970, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s play was declared as inaugurating “a new cinematic language.”

Mar 26, 2007 — Across five films, the Swedish director defined his guiding themes and cinematic style.

Aug 18, 2003 — The third installment in Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy about religious faith sees the auteur coming to terms with the pious rigidity and strangled emotional life of his own upbringing.

Apr 3, 2019 — This month’s round features Dalí’s Marx Brothers movie, Bergman family drama, Welles’s unpublished play, and more.

Jan 3, 2018 — Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918, and exhibitions and film series celebrating the hundredth anniversary are already underway. Update, 1/5: Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, a Janus Films retrospective of twenty-four works, will open at New York’s Film Forum on...

Nov 19, 2007 — Ingmar Bergman made some outstanding films before Sawdust and Tinsel (1953). But that film, released in America under the meretricious title The Naked Night—and known in Sweden as The Clown’s Evening—was the first that no other director could have made....

Mar 26, 2014 — The author recalls his encounters with the great Swedish actress.