"Actor: Margit Carlqvist"

• 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

• To Joy | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of Ingmar Bergman's key early works - directed when he was just 30 years old - To Joy explores some of the themes that would come to chracterise many of his later films: the incompatibility of spouses and the responsibility of artists. Marta and Stig both play in an orchestra conducted by Sonderby. Their relationship is a happy one and they soon decide to get married and have children. However things begin to turn sour when Stig begins a sordid affair that threatens to dest