In Focus: Ingmar Bergman

August 29–November 28, 2018

Explore Ingmar Bergman’s work in depth with this series featuring an expert lecture and discussion at each screening.

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  • The Seventh Seal

  • The Silence

  • Wild Strawberries

  • Sawdust and Tinsel

  • Smiles of a Summer Night

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Fanny and Alexander

    • Wednesday, November 28 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1982

    This chronicle of an early twentieth-century theatrical family, told from the perspective of a young brother and sister, is comic and tragic, opulent and intellectual, mystical and autobiographical. Bergman called it “the sum total of my life as a filmmaker.”

  • Cries and Whispers

    • Wednesday, November 14 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1972

    A dying woman (Harriet Andersson) is attended by her sisters (Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin) at a country house. “A laceratingly beautiful attempt to explore the human need not only to draw comfort from the past, but to project love back into its dusty reaches” (Monthly Film Bulletin).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Shame

    • Wednesday, November 7 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1968

    Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow star in “Bergman’s simple, masterly vision of normal war and what it does to survivors. Set a tiny step into the future, the film has the inevitability of a common dream” (Pauline Kael).

    Katinka Faragó and Linda H. Rugg in Conversation

  • Hour of the Wolf

    • Wednesday, October 31 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1968

    Digital Restoration

    A woman (Liv Ullmann) tells of her life on a remote island with her artist husband (Max von Sydow) in a film that intertwines supernatural mysteries with the no less mysterious torments of creativity.

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Persona

    • Wednesday, October 24 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1966

    Digital Restoration

    Exploring the strange symbiosis between a speechless actress (Liv Ullmann) and her nurse companion (Bibi Andersson), this is “Bergman at his most brilliant” (Time Out).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • The Silence

    • Wednesday, October 17 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1963

    Digital Restoration

    Two sisters play out dramas of lust and fear in a foreign land where war looms, an emotional landscape forsaken by God. A work of “staggering integrity” (Chicago Reader).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Winter Light

    • Wednesday, October 10 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1963

    Digital Restoration

    The central film in Bergman’s “God trilogy” features Gunnar Björnstrand as a pastor haunted by God’s silence. With Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin.

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • The Virgin Spring

    • Wednesday, October 3 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1960

    A stark medieval allegory of faith, sexual violence, and revenge. “Sven Nykvist's luminous black-and-white photography conspire[s] with the austerity of Bergman's imagery to create an extraordinary metaphysical charge” (Time Out).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Wild Strawberries

    • Wednesday, September 26 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1957

    The film that cemented Bergman’s international reputation deftly interweaves memory, reality, and dream. As an elderly professor recollecting his life’s failures, “Victor Sjöström gives one of the greatest performances of cinema” (National Film Theatre, London).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • The Seventh Seal

    • Wednesday, September 19 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1957

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    A medieval knight challenges Death to a game of chess in Bergman’s iconic work of cinematic philosophy. “A magically powerful film” (Pauline Kael).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Smiles of a Summer Night

    • Wednesday, September 12 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1955

    Digital Restoration

    Couples meet, split, and reconverge at a country house in the summer of 1900 in Bergman’s carnal comedy. “A tragic-comic chase and roundelay [carried] into elegance and lyric poetry” (Pauline Kael).

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Sawdust and Tinsel

    • Wednesday, September 5 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1953

    Digital Restoration

    Åke Grönberg and Harriet Andersson portray turn-of-the-century circus performers in Bergman’s earliest evocation of the theater of humiliation.

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg

  • Summer Interlude

    • Wednesday, August 29 3:10 PM
    Ingmar Bergman
    Sweden, 1951

    Digital Restoration

    A prima ballerina impulsively revisits the island of her youth and, in flashbacks, her first and only love. Bergman’s breakthrough film is a magical fusion of sunstruck elegiac love poem and dark suggestion.

    Lecture by Linda H. Rugg