SUBJECTS

Divorced people -- Drama

Saraband

Film to Table dinner follows

featuring

Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius,

After the screening, enjoy a Film to Table dinner at Babette, the cafe at BAMPFA. Join an intimate group of fellow filmgoers for a four-course, prix-fixe meal in a convivial, dinner-party atmosphere. Purchase dinner tickets in advance at babettecafe.com (film tickets must be purchased separately).

A blistering sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman’s final work proved that his grasp of human foibles had only sharpened, not mellowed, with age. Still seething after all these years, ex-spouses Marianne and Johan (longtime collaborators Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) are reunited when Marianne visits the surly old contrarian on his isolated estate. Slipping into the half-fond, half-insulting dialogue typical of former lovers, the two are soon overshadowed by the ongoing emotional warfare between Johan’s sixty-one-year-old son, Henrik, and Henrik’s teenage daughter, Karin. Bergman tunes this troubled foursome like a fine quartet, with each scene or sonata gathering in emotional resonance. Purposefully avoiding actual locations or realism, he places all events on pointedly artificial sets, highlighting the theatricality of the piece and the actors’ declarations. No one talks like this anymore, at least in films; instead, Saraband aims for the heights of Strindberg, Ibsen, or Chekhov, and achieves them.

Jason Sanders
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Ingmar Bergman
Cinematographer
  • Raymond Wemmenlöv
Language
  • Swedish
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 112 mins
Permission
  • Sony Pictures Classics
CINEFILES

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

View Saraband documents  

Saraband (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 2006

To think like the masters (article), Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer, 2005

Saraband (program note), San Francisco International Film Festival, 2005

Saraband (review), Reader (Chicago, Ill.), Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2005

Saraband (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 2005

Last dance? The nearness of love and hate occupies Bergman in 'Saraband' (review), Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan, 2005

Saraband (program note), New York Film Festival, 2004

Saraband (review), Variety, Gunnar Rehlin, 2003

Saraband (distributor materials), New Yorker Films

Displaying 9 of 9 publicly available documents.


View all Saraband documentation on CineFiles.