Product Description

Before The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries established him as one of the great masters of cinema, Ingmar Bergman created a series of less well known, devastating psychological character studies, marked by intricate, layered narratives, gritty environments, and haunting visuals. These early films, which show the stirrings of the genius to come, remain the hidden treasures of a European cinema on the cusp of a golden age. FIVE-DISC

BOX SET FEATURES:

Torment (1944)

In Ingmar Bergman's first produced screenplay, the dark coming-of-age drama Torment, Widgren, a boarding-school senior, is terrorized by his sadistic Latin teacher. When he falls for Bertha, a troubled local girl, he finds himself caught up even further in a web of emotional mind games.

Crisis (1946)

Urban beauty-shop proprietress Miss Jenny arrives in an idyllic rural town one morning to whisk away her eighteen-year-old daughter, Nelly, whom she abandoned as a child, from the loving woman who had raised her. Once in Stockholm, Nelly receives a crash course in adult corruption and wrenching heartbreak.

Port of Call (1948)

Berit, a suicidal young woman living in a working-class port town, unexpectedly falls for Gvsta, a sailor on leave. Haunted by a troubled past and held in a vice grip by her domineering mother, Berit begins to hope that her relationship with Gvsta might save her from her own self-destruction.

Thirst (1949)

A couple traveling across a war-ravaged Europe. A disintegrating marriage. A ballet dancer's scarred past. Her friend's psychological agony. Elliptically told in flashbacks, Thirst shows people enslaved to memory and united in isolation.

To Joy (1949)

An orchestra violinist's dreams of becoming a celebrated soloist and fears of his own mediocrity get in the way of his marriage to the patient, caring Marta. Played out to the music of Beethoven, To Joy is a heartbreaking tale of one man's inability to overcome the demons standing in the way of his happiness

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25291 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2007-03-27
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Original language: Swedish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 5
• Running time: 474 minutes

Amazon.com
In Hollywood, falling in love is a happy ending; in Ingmar Bergman movies, love is only the beginning and the ending is always in doubt. But Bergman's reputation for gloom is undeserved; though the five films in Early Bergman have titles like Torment and Crisis, they bristle with life, in all its passion and tenderness (ironically, the bleakest of the lot is titled To Joy). Sadness and whimsy walk hand in hand: As a young woman puts on her lipstick, she draws a frowning face on the mirror; as a husband hears about his wife's death, a small boy turns a toy bear on a stool in the background.

Bergman's career began as a screenwriter with Torment, a noir-ish tale of a volatile student and his sadistic Latin teacher. Stylishly directed by Alf Sjoberg, Torment's script already has Bergman trademarks: Vivid, unpredictable characters, sexual frankness, and a skeptical view of cultural pillars, from romance to honor. Bergman's first directorial venture, Crisis, brings in another prominent element, the subtle yet powerful conflicts among women, as a young girl is torn between her shallow, flamboyant birth mother and the caring but conservative woman who raised her. The tensions between daughter and mother persist in Port of Call, one of the strongest in the set; a rebellious young woman, whose mother sent her to reform school, staves off suicidal impulses by falling in love with a sailor. This brief and depressing-sounding summary doesn't capture the fluid camera movement or the movie's emotional potency, which balances misery with yearning and hope. Thirst demonstrates an increasing narrative sophistication; as it depicts a troubled marriage, the movie plucks multiple storylines like a musician plucking the strings of his instrument. Music itself is a central concern of the last of these five films: To Joy, in which a self-obsessed violinist corrodes his marriage with fear and self-doubt.

There's a startling freshness and vitality to the performances in all of Bergman's films, made all the more striking in contrast to Sjoberg's (though Torment is far from stale). From the beginning, Bergman draws something genuine from his actors, soon developing a visual style that manages to be alluring yet seemingly effortless, never struggling for an arresting image but simply capturing the unexpected jolts of life. The movies in Early Bergman are more raw than his later classics (Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Fanny & Alexander), but sometimes talent can be most clearly seen in its less polished form. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Nice Addition to an Existing Bergman Collection
Am happy to see that Criterion continues to put out more Bergman as time goes on. This collection includes arguably the best work from his early period and features most often actors Birger Malmstem and Stig Olin, two regulars from this phase in Bergman's career. It is remarkable how versatile these actors are, delivering distinct performances from film to film.

The prints are good, the subtitles removable. Each disc is packaged separately in a plastic case, and there is a concise essay printed on the inside cover for each film. The five cases slide up into the wraparound cover, so this isn't deluxe packaging. No special features, but these films are really intended for the Berman aficionado, who will presumably have seen one or more of them already.

All five films are nicely shot, and two of them (Port of Call and Thirst) are even recommendable to general viewers unaware of Bergman or his corpus. To Joy could just as well have been called To Despair--it is one of the few Bergman films I find truly depressing, with its depiction of a tortuous relationship involving a beautiful and congenial Swedish girl, portrayed by Maj-Britt Nilsson. The other two films, Frenzy and Crisis, besides their visual quality, have historical interest as Bergman's first produced screenplay and directorial effort, respectively.

Not included in this collection of early work are (among other films) The Night Is My Future (1947), which had popular success in its day but is quite conventional, and Prison/The Devil's Wanton (1949), which, while a mature and personal work, might be considered plodding and heavy-handed.

EARLY BERGMAN IS ALSO MINOR BERGMAN, EXCEPT FOR ONE MASTERPIECE
This is an excellent box set of early Bergman works, but after watching all five films I have to conclude that four of them are minor works. Not that they're not interesting, but I recommend the box set above all for THIRST, which is an astounding work. I hadn't seen it before, but after watching it twice now I'm convinced it's Bergman's first masterpiece, introducing many of the themes and techniques he would develop in movies such as THE SILENCE, PERSONA, SHAME, THE PASSION OF ANNA, and SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. THIRST is not otherwise available on DVD, I think, so the box set is worth getting even if the other films are only ones in which Bergman still hadn't found his way, much less his unique style.

THIRST almost leaps ahead over everything he did in the 50s to connect with what he started doing in the 60s. When he makes THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY in 1961, it seems to me he is picking up where he left off with THIRST. The main character is Rut, played effectively by Eva Henning. She is a ballet dancer whose life and career have gone downhill ever since she had a tragic love affair with a married man who abandoned her, an affair that resulted in an abortion that left her barren and psychologically damaged. She also suffered a knee injury that caused her career to abort. The back story is told in flashback, along with scenes from her dancing school days. The film opens on the last day of her vacation with her husband, Birtil, whom she apparently married on the rebound after her affair with Raoul. The movie opens as they wake up in a shabby hotel room and confront their dissolute life and turbulent marriage. Rut is psychologically dependent on Birtil. She also feels tenderness toward him; she might even love him. But she also feels contempt because he's a stand-in for Raoul, and Raoul, however cruel, however big a male chauvenist pig he was, was an assertive military man (i.e., a real man), while poor Birtil--and Rut can't help throwing it in his face--is timid and wimpy (i.e., not a real man at all). When we first see him, he's asleep in a baby-like position with his rump up in the air. Anyhow, a stunning psychological portrait of their complex relationship unfolds on the last day of their vacation as they travel back home through black fantasies of murder and revenge.

The movie takes place in one day, much of it real time, but gives backstory in Rut's memory-flashbacks, which are deftly weaved in. There's also a second thread to follow, which is confusing at first but makes total sense by the end. Birtil has had an affair with a married woman named Viola, apparently also a dancer. On the very day that we meet Rut and Beril on their vacation, Viola, reeling from both her husband's death and her affair with Birtil, is seeing her psychologist, Doctor Rosengren, a cold, calculating sadist who tries to take sexual advantage of her fragile state. Viola rejects him and flees his office. As she walks down the street, she meets an old friend, who invites her up to her apartment. We had already met this friend in one of Rut's flashbacks from her days at Miss Henriksson's dancing school, so she serves as a link between Viola and Rut. (By the way, Miss Henriksson, an old, tough boozer, is brilliantly played by Naima Wifstrand). Anyhow, we then follow the events that lead up to Viola's suicide. In the apartment, the friends get drunk, but things turn dark as Viola realizes that she's being seduced into a lesbian encounter. The woman who plays the lesbian seducer--her name escapes me--gives a tremendous performance. (In fact, there are great performances from just about everybody.)

But the film begins and ends with Rut and Bertil, who leave the hotel room to catch a train home. On the train, through a phantasmagoric, war-torn landscape, their marriage comes to a crisis. The title, THIRST, can refer to several things in the movie: alcoholism, emotional thirst, suicide (Viola drowns herself); keep the theme in mind as you watch the film. In any case, it's Bergman's first major attempt and well worth buying even if you have to purchase the whole box set. The other films are good if intermittently dull, and they pale beside this one.

Nice Start for the Eclipse Series
Judging from this first entry, Criterion's new line, Eclipse, will be serving a valuable function for film buffs by providing high-quality DVD transfers of hard-to-find classic titles. The early Bergman films on display here look great, as expected from Criterion, although perhaps they're of more interest to Bergman completists than to the average filmgoer. They're all easy enough to watch, with Bergman's usual expertise with actors guaranteeing many interesting performances on display. But the major pleasure here is seeing the first appearance in these films of many themes that will be given deeper, more memorable treatment in such later works as PERSONA and SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. The set's price is more than reasonable, the packaging attractive. Recommended.