Underrated Bergman
Ingmar Bergman's almost fated 1978 filmic teaming with Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten), is amongst the very best of the films in his canon. It is also the most emotionally intense of the series of Strindbergian or Chekhovian chamber dramas he has filmed over the years, which includes his Spider Trilogy (Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) and such other films as Cries And Whispers. That said, it is perhaps the simplest film that Bergman ever directed, even simpler in plot than The Silence. It was filmed in Norway whilst Bergman was in his self-imposed exile from Sweden over trumped up tax evasion charges, and backed with British and American money. Ingrid Bergman, meanwhile, had just been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill her a few years later, and this was he last acting role for film, although she did a final television movie portraying Golda Meier.
The whole film basically revolves around the tensions between a famous pianist, Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman), and her visit to her emotionally fragile and bitter eldest daughter Eva (Liv Ullman), a four-eyed frump, who lives with her pastor husband in a vicarage. Bergman always seems his best when two female leads are front and center. He may be the best director of actresses in cinema history, and certainly the best writer for them....The camerawork by Sven Nykvist is not as blatantly showy in this film, although quite painterly in the gorgeous colorful interior of the vicarage is stunning in its reflection of the autumnal feel of the film and the state the characters are in, especially the gallery of close-ups that sear these characters and their emotions into a viewer's mind....Charlotte reminds me much of the Maureen Stapleton character, Pearl, from Woody Allen's Interiors, right down to her garish red dress, which clearly shows that she is vibrant and faces life, and to the motto she claims came from her lover, Leonardo: `A sense of reality is a matter of talent. Most people lack that talent and maybe it's just as well.'....
Ingmar Bergman is certainly a great director, but that greatness stems from his being a great writer, first and foremost. His writing is for adults, and not the deliterate preteens that current publishers (think Dave Eggers, James Frey, Elizabeth Wurtzel) and Hollywood studios aim their wares at. Be thankful for that, and for this film. Autumn Sonata is a masterpiece. Period.

The agony of blaming and forgiving
In his memoir Images, Bergman concludes that "Autumn Sonata" isn't a successful film for two reasons. First, he says that he lacked the courage or the talent to make the film what he originally envisioned: a drama in which the long night of recrimination leads to the daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) rebirthing the mother Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman). There's precious little rebirth in the final version of the film. Second, Bergman worries that the film was too self-consciously Bergmanian: that is, he'd fallen into the trap of making movies that he was expected to make.

I think the film is more successful than Bergman's appraisal suggests, but it's not one of his best ones. Somehow Eva's husband Viktor (Halvar Bjork) seems a fifth wheel. It's not clear what purpose his character plays. More importantly, though, Bergman couldn't quite get Ingrid Bergman to quit being the grand actress of the 1940s and enter into the ensemble acting spirit of his scripts. At times, especially in the first half hour or so of the film, to be entirely uncomfortable with her role. that she was nominated for an academy role was surely an homage to her career rather than her performance.

The film is intriguing, as all Bergman films are, because it invites us to explore the boundaries of repressed anger, parental-children relations, false memories, and the dynamics of forgiving. Eva feels stunted by her overbearing and aloof mother, and in the terrible night in which cards are laid on the table she shrieks that her entire life has been ruined by her childhood. But it's clear that Eva to a certain extent is using memories, false or otherwise, to excuse her own failings. She has been warped by her mother; there's no doubt of that, and Bergman uses the crippled sister Helena (Lena Nyman) as a very visible metaphor to convey the point. But at least some of Eva's neurosis is of her own making. So fascinating questions of the complexity of forgiving when false memories are at play get raised by the film.

Liv Ullmann is outstanding as Eva, the broken, neurotic, incredibly angry, and frozen daughter who longs for love but mistrusts any loving overture. Her performance is hands-down the best in the film. Next to her, Ingrid Bergman seems awkward.

It's worth noting that although "Autumn Sonata" is one of his chamber pieces, it's nonetheless one of the few films Bergman made which features natural landscape. There are several lovely shots shots of the Norwegian countryside and fjords where the movie was shot.

Filmmaking at its best
Autumn Sonata is a great psychological study of a dysfunctional relationship between a self-absorbed mother and her two daughters, as well as the devastating damage inflicted by her negligent parenting.

Bergman makes a convincing case that achieving one's true happiness - that Aristotelian ideal of human perfection - is not to be achieved through focusing exclusively on one's own needs and wants.

The relationship between parents and their children can go very wrong, even tragically wrong. There is, indeed, such a thing as poor parenting. How sad and how unfair that it is the children who often pay the heaviest price for the wrongdoings of their own parents.

The acting, script, directing, and cinematography in this film are all superb.

Sonata played by Bergmans and Ullman
This excellent psychological study of a dysfunctional family centers on a conflict between the self-sacrificing daughter (Liv Ullmann) and her career-pursuing mother (Ingrid Bergman). On one night after many years, Ullmann finally gets a chance to articulate and express all the things unsaid in the years before. Compounding the darkness of the night is the presence of another daughter, suffering from a mental disease. Of course, the load of emotional outpouring on that single night is difficult to contain by both women... However, as is always the case with Ingmar Bergman, this film and its characters are full of TRUTH, you just can't help thinking "Well, that's what life is about". And although the bitterness is just about to prevail, the film ends on a brighter note, offering a glimpse of hope. This was the only collaboration between the two great Swedish Bergmans (unrelated, just of the same surname). It was a high time. Ingrid was diagnosed with a terminal cancer at the time and died four years after the film was released. The bottom line: highly recommended to lovers of "thinking cinema".

Essential film genius: Bergman's 'Höstsonaten.'
The world lost one of its greatest film directors recently. In his "celluloid poems" (as Woody Allen calls them), film genius Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) examined the human condition in all of its bleakness, despair, humor, and hope, expanding our sense of what it means to be human. He favored intuition over intellect, and his films typically pondered the deepest concerns of humanity: mortality, loneliness, faith, and love (as in difficult, thwarted, repressed, and unexpressed love). Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten) (1978) tells the emotionally-powerful story of a famous pianist, Charlotte Andergast (played by Ingrid Bergman in her final major film performance) who, in the autumn of her life, is confronted by her daughter, Eva (Liv Ullmann), for neglecting her family while pursuing her music career. To her surprise, Charlotte finds her mentally-disabled daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman) living with Eva rather than in the institution where she had placed her. The tension between Charlotte and Eva gradually builds, until mother and daughter have an all-night confrontation filled with possibly life-changing revelations. Like Bergman's other work, Autumn Sonata explores the difficulties of human relationships, dysfunctional families, the inability to communicate, and God's silence. Ingrid Bergman was nominated for an Academy Award for her fine performance.

This Criterion edition features a pristine digital transfer of Sven Nykvist's stunning Eastmancolor cinematography, an audio essay by film historian Peter Cowie, and the original theatrical trailer. Highly recommended.

G. Merritt