SUBJECTS

Bergman, Ingmar, 1918- -- Biography -- Drama, Brothers and sisters -- Sweden -- Drama, Children -- Sweden -- Drama, Mother and child -- Sweden -- Drama, Remarried people -- Sweden -- Drama, Stepfathers -- Sweden -- Drama

Fanny and Alexander

(Fanny och Alexander)

featuring

Gunn Wållgren, Allan Edwall, Ewa Fröhling, Bertil Guwe,

Bergman’s dreamlike family chronicle is set in turn-of-the-century Sweden, where the members of an upper-middle-class theatrical clan are sheltered by their own theatrics from the deepening chaos of the outside world. Bergman has the grace in this most graceful film not to view their histrionics and eccentricities as neuroses. One tumultuous year in the life of the Ekdahl family is viewed through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, whose imagination fuels the magical goings-on leading up to and following the death of his father. His mother’s remarriage to a stern prelate banishes Alexander and his sister Fanny from all known joys, and thrusts them and the movie into a kind of gothic horror. The bishop is a typical Bergman figure whose severity has gone awry—he has become sinister—and the film’s round rejection of him in favor of “kindness, affection, and goodness” may be Bergman’s fondest farewell to cinema, in what was announced at the time as his last film.

This is the theatrical version of the film; the full-length television version, which runs more than five hours, screens on December 27.

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Ingmar Bergman
Cinematographer
  • Sven Nykvist
Language
  • Swedish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 188 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander) documents  

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) (article), Reader (Chicago, Ill.), 2007

The passion of Ingmar Bergman (program), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, Bart Testa, 2005

After the rehearsals: Bergman's 1982 career summation (review), Village Voice, Michael Atkinson, 2004

Ingmar Bergman's magic lantern: life as art in retrospect (program note), Hopkins Center of Dartmouth College, Ulrike Rainer, 1988

Fanny and Alexander (review), Village Voice, Andrew Sarris, 1986

Bergman wins best foreign film third time (article), Oakland Tribune, Bob Thomas (Critic), 1984

Fanny and Alexander (article), Variety, 1983

P(l)aying penance (review), The Threepenny Review, Paul Skenazy, 1983

A valedictory (review), California Magazine, Kenneth Turan, 1983

Fanny and Alexander (review), Film Journal International, Rod Granger, 1983

Displaying 10 of 26 publicly available documents.


View all Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander) documentation on CineFiles.