Face to Face (1976)

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Movie
German title Face to face
Original title ANSICTS MOT ANSICS
Country of production Sweden
original language Swedish
Publishing year 1976
length 135 (TV 177) minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Ingmar Bergman
script Ingmar Bergman
production Ingmar Bergman
camera Sven Nykvist
cut Siv Lundgren
occupation

Face to Face (Original title: Ansigte mot ansigte ) is a Swedish drama directed by Ingmar Bergman from 1976 .

action

The psychiatrist Jenny Isaksson spends the summer without her family - her husband, who is also a psychiatrist, is in the USA for professional reasons , and her fourteen-year-old daughter Anna is on vacation with her boyfriend for the first time. The house they built is not yet ready for occupancy, which is why Jenny temporarily stays with her grandparents, with whom she spent her childhood. Shortly after her arrival, she is plagued by depressing memories, hallucinations and nightmares that are strongly linked to her past. The image of a woman blind in one eye repeatedly haunts her. Tomas, a colleague, makes her erotic advances openly; after she rejects them, a platonic friendship slowly develops between them. One morning in her new home, Jenny comes across a patient and two unknown men, one of whom is trying to rape her. She then makes a suicide attempt. Tomas helps her to overcome her crisis. During her slow convalescence , which was accompanied by nervous breakdowns, she told him, among other things, about the early accidental death of her parents and the strict discipline of her grandmother. When Tomas went abroad for a longer period of time, she had composed herself so far that she could even cope with the emerging alienation from her daughter and the impending death of her grandfather. She announces that she will resume her work in the clinic.

background

Film start

The film, which was produced in a television and a theatrical version, was broadcast as a 177-minute four-part series on Swedish television from April 28, 1976 and was later released in cinemas in a 40-minute shorter version, in Germany on May 20, 1976.

Parallels in Bergman's work

The nightmare in which Jenny sees herself lying in the coffin takes up an idea from Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957). A scene in which the skin of a patient is torn from her face and Jenny's account of how she was locked in a closet as a child can be found in a similar form in The Hour of the Wolf (1968).

The title of the film is based on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians : “We now see a dark image through a mirror; but then face to face. Now I know piece by piece; but then I will recognize how I am recognized. ”This excerpt from Paul's Song of Songs had already served as Bergman's Wie in einer Spiegel (1961) as the title.

Reviews

Despite multiple praise for Liv Ullmann's performance, Face-to-Face received mixed criticism. Among other things, the lack of narrative rigor and the treatment of all too well-known Bergman topics were criticized.

Under the title Schaf im Wolfspelz, Der Spiegel describedBergman's direction as mediocre and Ullmann's play as excessive. “Bergman's famous nightmares and abysses now seem homely and almost self-parodic. And the redemption that he offers the viewer at the end [...] has something narrow-mindedly comforting about it. "

The lexicon of international film judged the film more benevolently as a "drama that touches diverse conflict situations" about "the love and hope that make a meaningful life possible". But despite a differentiated and patient analysis, it "always loses its power of persuasion where it comes close to being too nervous self-reflection".

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Face to Face in the Swedish Film Database, accessed July 18, 2012.
  2. ^ Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , pp. 225-229 u. 301-302.
  3. ↑ a b Face to Face in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  4. ↑ As in a Spiegel (Sweden) in Der Spiegel No. 32/1962 of August 8, 1962, accessed on July 28, 2012.
  5. ↑ Cf. u. a. Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times , Aug. 6, 1976; Leonard Maltins 2008 Movie Guide, Signet / New American Library, New York 2007; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , quoted from Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , p. 225.
  6. ↑ Schaf im Wolfspelz in: Der Spiegel , No. 23 of May 31, 1976, accessed on July 28, 2012.