"Actor: Birgitta Valberg"

• Smiles Of A Summer Night | DVD | (24/09/2001) from £10.16   |  Saving you £9.83 (96.75%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The film which established its Swedish writer/director on the stage of world cinema, 1956's Smiles of a Summer Night is what some people would consider a contradiction in terms--an Ingmar Bergman comedy. Set in the 19th century, Smiles features Bergman stalwart Gunner Bjornstrand as Fredrik, a lawyer yet to consummate his marriage to his young wife Anne. He has hankerings after a former mistress, the voluptuous actress Desiree, who is now mistress to the bellicose Count Malcolm, whose own wife attempts to seduce Fredrik in order to make Malcolm jealous. Fredrik's wife, meanwhile, hankers after her own stepson, an austere young man confused by his repressed sexual longings. This web of romantic intrigue is eventually disentangled at a weekend party held by Desiree's mother, a formidably acerbic, fairy godmother-style figure.Smiles of a Summer Night is sparkling but mordant, stronger on absurdism than belly laughs and it is lent shade by the long shadows of existential angst. It conveys all of Bergman's core messages about human relationships but in a light, operatic bundle of cinematic joy.On the DVD: Presented in the original academy ratio, the film is restored here to its original, silvery glory. There are extensive notes from Bergman's memoirs, in which he talks candidly about the near-suicidal depression he was in when he wrote this ironically light script, as well as additional notes from critic Derek Malcolm, who aptly compares the film to a Mozart opera and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game. --David Stubbs

• The Virgin Spring | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in 1960 and set in mediaeval Sweden, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring is based on a folk ballad. It also examines a society in transition from worshipping the old Norse gods to Christianity. The film starkly contrasts Ingeri--a dark, feral Odin-worshipping brunette, foster daughter to a Christian family headed by Max Von Sydow--and their own daughter, Karin, pretty and blonde but also vain and naive, and resented by Ingeri. They travel out together to a distant church where Karin is to offer votive candles to the Virgin Mary. However, en route, Karin is raped and murdered by two desperate goatherders, accompanied by a 13-year-old boy. By coincidence, the goatherders then seek refuge with Karin's parents and even try to sell them her clothes, which proves to be a mortal error. Bergman was greatly influenced by Kurosawa, the Japanese director of The Seven Samurai, when he made The Virgin Spring, as evinced in its ominous use of dark and shade and lengthy sequences without dialogue. However, this is more than pastiche. Although the Christian ending with which Bergman feels obliged to conclude the film doesn't quite sit well in a movie in which God is as palpably absent as in any Bergman movie, the slow, remorseless pace of the murder and subsequent retribution bring to mind Kieslowki's A Short Film About Killing in their sense of the futility of vengeance. On the DVD: The Virgin Spring arrives on disc in a restoration that vividly enhances the sense of light and shade which is integral to the movie. Notes from critic Phillip Strick provide background to the movie, including the legend on which the film was based, as well as observing that Bergman was later so embarrassed by the film's debt to Kurosawa that he disowned it, only to be told by Kurosawa himself not to be so silly. --David Stubbs

• The Ingmar Bergman Collection | DVD | (27/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £299.99

  This collection brings together all the works of master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. With a jaw dropping 30 features (over 47 hours of film!) plus a limited edition exclusive book reprint of Talking With Ingmar Bergman' - a rare transcript of three seminars Bergman gave in Dallas in 1983 - this monolith of a collection is sure to delight the hard core fans! Features Comprise: 1. After the Rehearsal 2. All These Women 3. Autumn Sonata 4. Cries and Whispers 5. Crisis 6. Dreams 7. Farodokument 79 8. From The Life of the Marionettes 9. A Lesson in Love 10. The Magician 11. Music in Darkness 12. Persona 13. Port of Call 14. Prison 15. The Rite 16. Saraband 17. Scenes From a Marriage 18. The Seventh Seal 19. The Silence 20. Smiles of a Summer Night 21. Summer Interlude 22. Summer With Monika 23. Three Strange Loves 24. Through a Glass Darkly 25. Torment 26. To Joy 27. The Virgin Spring 28. Waiting Women 29. Wild Strawberries 30. Winter Light