![]() The film's narrative is a good one, a small and punishingly honest scrap of interpersonal conflict made out almost entirely of grace notes but the meta-narrative is such a barnburner that it almost makes it hard to tell. This means, among other things, that if I am to write a review that can be even remotely understood, I have to write something other than their last name (they were not, for the record, related), which means you'll see a lot of "Ingrid did this", "Ingmar did that" for the rest of this piece, like I'm their most intimate buddy, or some damn thing (also the director was at this time married to the woman born Ingrid Karlebo, meaning that there were two Ingrid Bergmans on set at times)īut what it mostly means is that Autumn Sonata cannot help but arrive on our doorstep with an extraordinary amount of baggage, the full weight of what the two Bergmans had cultivated as their personae over the years crushing down on the fragile dramatic spine of the movie (Ingmar implied later on that the project was not conceived with Ingrid specifically in mind). This is, before it is anything else, the single collaboration between the two most internationally famous representatives of the Swedish film industry, * the one where iconic AAA-level Hollywood movie star Ingrid Bergman and legendary art house director Ingmar Bergman pooled their talents in a film that has, ironically, not a single öre of Swedish money it (if I have the story right, it was a West German company taking money from the United Kingdom to film at an old studio in Norway). Although not as perfect as The Seventh Seal, or Wild Strawberries, Autumn Sonata still has much to say, whether we feel comfortable listening to it or not.One cannot grapple with 1978 Autumn Sonata, not in any of the ways it's doing pretty much anything, without going straight to the most blazingly obvious. I thought this especially so in the flashback sequences, and in the scene close to the end of the film when Eva is in the cemetery. Sven Nykvyst's cinematography is stunning. At times this film is painful to watch, and at times is emotionally draining. And that is when the real nightmare begins. When Charlotte is awakened by a nightmare, she and Eva begin a late-night talk. Eva is so desperate for love and affection from her mother that she seemingly misses the fact that her husband loves her very much. but has very little to offer her own children. Charlotte can be totally charming to her public, her agents, her fans. There are some other clues in the early part of the story that indicate she probably wished that her daughter Helena would have died long ago. After Charlotte finishes playing, she says, "Well, I HAVE been playing these Chopin pieces for 37 years." Charlotte's self-absorption is pretty amazing when you realize that her ill daughter was in an institution, then moved to Eva's house, and she had no idea that it happened. Although the scene is dramatically pivotal, it did produce one of the few really funny lines in the movie. Mother is successful, and daughter is a failure. (When pianists have a piece memorized, they do that to show the audience that they have no need for the printed music.) Charlotte, of course, plays beautifully (she could play no other way). She laid down the music rack on the piano. When she asks her mother to play the piece for her, Charlotte does the one thing that signaled to me that "the war was on". She works as hard as she can, but the music sounds contrived and unmusical. At first, there are a few catty remarks exchanged, but the turning point is when Eva offers to play the piano for her mother. Charlotte is a very talented, but completely self-absorbed woman. When left alone, they wonder about each other's expectations, but continue on. At first, everything is fine, as mother and daughter do their best to make each other as comfortable as possible. Helena has a crippling disease, and at one time was living in some type of institution. Charlotte's other daughter, Helena, is also living with Eva. They have not seen each other for 7 years. ![]() Ingrid Bergman as Charlotte, is a concert pianist visiting her daughter Eva, played by Liv Ullmann.
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