"Director: Ingmar Bergman"

• 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

• Wild Strawberries | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in 1957, Wild Strawberries finds the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman at the height of his powers. It's a road movie, in effect: an aged medical professor (Victor Sjöström)--lonely, disillusioned and haunted by dreams of death--travels across country to receive an honorary degree. But as with all good road movies, the outer journey parallels an inner one. Incidents along the road conjure up memories, and Professor Borg finds himself forced to confront the failures and lost opportunities of his life. Gentle and elegiac, Bergman's film is a masterpiece of compassion and reconciliation, and also a tribute to his predecessor Sjöström, the greatest Swedish director of the silent era. The 78-year-old film maker gives an austere, moving performance, and Bergman treats his lined features like a landscape of yearning and regret. Sjöström is ably supported by other members of Bergman's regular repertory company of the period, particularly Bibi Andersson, heartbreakingly appealing, as the lost love of Borg's youth. --Philip Kemp

• Persona | DVD | (28/01/2013) from £7.79   |  Saving you £5.20 (66.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Widely recognised as Bergman's most extraordinary and influential film Persona is a rich and poetic study of womanhood and identity featuring two of the Swedish master's greatest leading ladies Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson. Elizabeth (Liv Ullmann) is a famous actress who is suddenly taken ill and left without speech. While convalescing on the coast she is cared for by Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) and silenced by the effect of her possibly psychosomatic illness finds that her nurse does the talking for both of them. Gradually the two women's identities begin to merge and their personalities become one. Almost impossible to describe in words this landmark film is a visual tour-de-force which remains as innovative and startling today as it was in 1966. This version is fully uncut and features newly created uncensored subtitles.

• Shame | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  On a remote island far removed from a raging civil war Jan and Eva retreat to their apolitical fortress: a small vegetable farm. But their serene existence is shattered when soldiers violently invade their home. Now caught in the crosshairs of a brutal and inhuman conflict Jan and Eva become survivors with only one concern - to endure.

• Autumn Sonata | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ingmar Bergman's slow-burning story of a concert pianist who mourning the loss of her lover is invited to stay with her daughter. Their relationship is strained but the encounter is crucial for the future of both women...

• The Seventh Seal | Blu Ray | (03/12/2007) from £22.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (19.06%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Ingmar Bergman's classic drama celebrates its 50th anniversary with this cinematic re-issue.

• The Silence | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £8.39   |  Saving you £14.59 (270.18%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The third in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "chamber works" featuring characters in isolated, existentially dramatic settings, The Silence, made in 1963, is set in Timoka, a fictional Eastern European town with its own made-up language. Stylistically more sensual and maximal than its austere predecessors Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light, it was both a success and a scandal in its day, featuring as it does scenes of masturbation, sex and even lesbian eroticism. Jorgen Lindstrom plays Jonas, a small boy travelling with his mother Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) and aunt Ester (Ingrid Thulin). His aunt is dying of consumption, but his mother is a great deal more alive and smouldering with sexual energy. As the tension between the bedridden aunt and the frustrated mother mounts, Jonas roams the hotel corridors and chances almost surreally upon the hotels only other occupants--an elderly floor waiter and a troupe of performing dwarves. Meanwhile, his mother is picked up by a waiter in a cafe, is seduced by him in a church then engages in a traumatically miserable bout of hotel sex. Sultry, full of incident and dreamlike cinematic spectacle (the performing dwarves, a rumbling tank, an overheated railway carriage) there's a sense of aimlessness and oblivion about The Silence, in which the godlessness of the universe, though never discussed, is implied throughout the movie. There is, however, a note of humanist hope struck in the conclusion, more convincing than the platitudinous finale of Through a Glass Darkly. On the DVD: Bergman's notes explain how he had long nurtured the notion of setting a movie in an imaginary city where "the rules of society cease to exist", and how the young boy's curious wanderings were inspired by his first exposure to Stockholm as a child. Critic Philip Strick's notes reveal that Greta Garbo had at one point been mooted to make a return to the screen in this film and that in certain countries, censors insisted on separate screenings of The Silence for males and females. --David Stubbs

• Winter Light | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The second of an Ingmar Bergman trilogy, 1962's Winter Light is a deliberate repudiation of the "God is love" message of its predecessor Through a Glass Darkly. Gunnar Bjornstrand stars as Tomas, a pastor in a remote parish tending to a dwindling congregation, as tense and distracted as David--the novelist Bjornstrand plays in Through a Glass Darkly. He finds himself trying to counsel a local fisherman Jonas, who is plagued by a sense of impending atomic doom but realises that the religious platitudes he consoles him with--"put your faith in the Lord"--are mere drivel. He himself is wracked by religious doubts, unable to tolerate "God's silence" and unable to prevent the fisherman from committing suicide. He finds himself taking out his inner woe on his eczema-riddled mistress, played by an unflatteringly made up Ingrid Thulin. Described by Bergman's own wife as a "dreary masterpiece", the synopsis to Winter Light seems almost comically miserable, yet this passion play is gripping in its unsparing bleakness, bathed in the stark illumination implied by the title, ironically akin to the light of a religious epiphany. Released at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, its preoccupations and all-pervasive anxieties are especially apt. On the DVD: Bergman's own notes reveal that Winter Lightis among his own favourites and he explains the evolution of the film's ideas at some length. Critic Philip Strick's background notes reveal that Gunnar Bjornstrand was exhausted and ill for much of the making of the film, which doubtless enhanced his anguished performance here. --David Stubbs

• The Seventh Seal | Blu Ray | (01/11/2021) from £20.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  As the plague tears through medieval Europe, a knight (Max von Sydow), returning from the crusades, challenges Death to a game of chess in order to postpone his demise. An allegorical masterpiece asking big questions about faith and superstition, Ingmar Bergman's iconic The Seventh Seal remains one of cinema's most important and influential films. Presented here for the first time on 4K Ultra HD the BFI's first ever UHD release experience Bergman's timeless classic like never before. Special Features Presented on 4K UHD Blu-ray and High Definition Blu-ray Audio commentary on The Seventh Seal by film critic and editor-in-chief of Diabolique magazine, Kat Ellinger Other extras TBC

• Cries And Whispers | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers is a brilliant and at times shockingly traumatic piece of chamber cinema. It also represented a renaissance for Bergman, whose previous few films had flopped commercially. Set in a large house with interiors done out entirely in a disquieting red and against a soundtrack of ticking and barely audible chatter, the film features three of Bergman’s female stalwarts. Harriet Andersson plays Agnes--a thirtysomething woman dying of cancer--Ingrid Thulin plays her sister Karin--non-tactile and caught in a marriage with a man she finds physically repulsive--and Liv Ulmann is the almost childishly sensual second sister Maria. Kari Sylwan, meanwhile, stars as the earth-motherly maid Anna, whose cradling of the dying Agnes against her naked bosom is one of the centrepieces of the movie. Much of what transpires here can be construed as fantasy sequence, including one extraordinary incident in which Thulin cuts her vagina with broken glass and smears the blood over herself, in order to avoid sex with her husband. Agnes’ unbearable cries of anguish in her death throes, however, are all too real. Many familiar Bergman themes are explored in Cries And Whispers--mortality, the existence of God (here doubted by a Pastor) and the space between people. However, they are set against a singular, blood-red, dreamlike ambience that is irresistible. This is Bergman at his finest. On the DVD: the dominant red backdrops of the movie are richly enhanced in this edition. Text-only extras include notes from Bergman’s own memoirs. In a lengthy extract here, he reveals that he had considered Mix Farrow for the part of one of the sisters. Philip Strick’s additional notes add further context and background--it seems that the film’s success in America was due to its distribution by, of all people, Roger Corman. --David Stubbs

• The Seventh Seal | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ingmar Bergman's classic drama celebrates its 50th anniversary with this cinematic re-issue.

• Ingmar Bergman Vol.2 | Blu Ray | (08/11/2021) from £34.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  For over 50 years, Ingmar Bergman produced ground-breaking works of cinema that established him as one of the world's most acclaimed, enduring and influential filmmakers. In the 1950s he firmly established himself at the vanguard of world cinema. Following his breakthrough success Summer with Monika (1953), Bergman continued with a series of ground-breaking productions. Many of which are still considered some of the greatest films ever made. Presented over six discs, Ingmar Bergman: Volume 2 features eight landmark titles by the iconic filmmaker presented together on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. These include the Palme d'Or-nominated comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), the introspective meditation on old age and human existence, Wild Strawberries (1957) and the iconic exploration of faith and death, The Seventh Seal (1957) The films: Summer Interlude (1951), Waiting Women (1952), Summer with Monika (1953), A Lesson in Love (1954), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), The Magician (1958) Special Features Audio commentary on The Seventh Seal by film critic and editor-in-chief of Diabolique magazine, Kat Ellinger Perfect-bound book featuring new essays by David Jenkins, Ellen Cheshire, Leigh Singer, Kieron McCormack, Philip Kemp, Jessica Land, Geoff Andrew and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Other extras TBC Limited edition (5,000 units)

• The Magic Flute (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (23/04/2018) from £11.48   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Ingmar Bergman puts his indelible stamp on Mozart's exquisite opera in this sublime rendering of one of the composer's best-loved works: a celebration of love, forgiveness, and the brotherhood of man. The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten) stars Josef Köstlinger as Tamino, the young man determined to rescue a beautiful princess from the clutches of parental evil. Available for the first time on Blu-ray the BFI are proud to present this film from one of the world's most acclaimed directors. Features: Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition Fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the film and full film credits

• Passion Of Anna | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  On a windswept barren island Andreas lives simply and quietly until he becomes entangled with Anna a beautiful mysterious widow and a neighbouring couple harbouring their own sorrows and illusions. But soon secrets from Andreas and Anna's pasts threaten to destroy everything...

• The Seventh Seal | DVD | (24/09/2001) from £11.39   |  Saving you £8.60 (75.50%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ingmar Bergman's classic drama celebrates its 50th anniversary with this cinematic re-issue.

• Summer With Monika | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Released in 1953, Summer with Monika, an early Ingmar Bergman-directed melodrama, did much to establish the reputation of Swedish cinema, and perhaps Swedish women in general, as leading the vanguard in sexual liberation. The film attracted the wrath of the censors and one scene of lovemaking had to be cut. While subsequent generations will look at the film and wonder whatever the fuss was about, it retains a vivid and frolicsome sensuality, before submitting to the inevitable, Bergmanesque bleakness. The film tells the story of a young couple, Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (18-year-old Harriet Andersson, with whom Bergman would fall in love) stuck in lousy jobs in Stockholm. Harry is beset by parental responsibility--his mother died young and his father is ill--while Monika is fed up with her drunken, violent father. They escape in a motorboat and to spend a blissful summer on an island in the archipelago. Once Monika gets pregnant and they're forced to steal food, however, the idyll concludes and they return to Stockholm, where the relationship disintegrates. You realise that Monika, from a large and fractious family, yearns for escapism, while Harry, who has never known true family life, longs for domestic stability. It is he who is left holding the baby. But Bergman does not quite condemn Monika, giving her one of his best scenes: in a cafe, estranged from Harry, chatting up a stranger, she stares unwaveringly and directly to camera, as if defying us to judge her. Visually ravishing, this film would have a deep impact on French New Wave cinema. On the DVD: Summer with Monika on disc offers a fine restoration of the original film, and includes notes from Phillip Strick who points out that the film is in part hymn of praise to Stockholm's beauty and was influenced by the documentary "City Symphonies" made during World War II. --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

• Prison | DVD | (26/06/2006) from £9.00   |  Saving you £10.99 (122.11%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A maths teacher approaches a former pupil now a film director with an idea for a film: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. Upon considering the idea for his next project the director shares his memories with a journalist while filming an ill-fated passage from his past... Based in and around a movie studio this experimental and intriguing film is essentially a film within a film and is notable for being the first Bergman film in which Death a key leitmotif makes an appea

• The Magician | DVD | (24/09/2001) from £7.99   |  Saving you £14.00 (233.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A sort of existential horror movie set in what often feels like a darkly imaginary 1846, The Magician is Ingmar Bergman's meditation on the restrictive nature of modern rationalism. Max Von Sydow cuts a suitably melancholy and mystical figure as Dr Vogler, the mute hypnotist who travels with a group of players to Stockholm, only to be examined and humiliated by a team of sceptical inquisitors led by Gunnar Bjornstrand's Dr Vergerus and a hog-like police chief. Dr Vogler exacts his revenge on Vergerus, however, in an extraordinary feat of illusion.With its elaborate, occasionally expressionistic sets and its feel of a scrupulously re-enacted nightmare, The Magician is reminiscent at times of Poe or even The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. However, the "below stairs" characters--including Ake Fridell's ebullient Master of Ceremonies and a host of giggling wenches--add comic energy to what is otherwise a startling and sombre reflection of the nature of art and life. It would prove a turning point in Bergman's career as he moved away from his early, "romantic" period.On the DVD: Presented in the original academy ratio, the mix of soft light and harsh shade for which credit should go to photographer Gunnar Fischer, is well-restored here. In notes from his memoirs included here, Bergman relates how his adventures and privations as part of a theatre company in Malmo provided inspiration for The Magician, while critic Ronald Bergman's notes talk of "the ability of the artist to find truth in both fact and fantasy". --David Stubbs

• The Touch (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (23/04/2018) from £11.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The BFI is proud to present Ingmar Bergman's The Touch available here for the first time on Blu-ray worldwide. Happily married mother Karin (Bibi Andersson, Persona) surprises herself by responding in kind to a sudden profession of love from David (Elliott Gould, Mash), an archaeologist visiting Sweden, whom her doctor husband (Max von Sydow) has befriended. But however exhilarating, love is seldom simple and deceit - and David's volatile temperament - take their toll. Bergman's first film made with an established Hollywood star was originally released in an entirely English-language version, this presentation of The Touch is a restoration by the Swedish Film Institute from the original negative of Bergman's preferred Swedish-English cut. Features: Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition Ingmar Bergman (1971, 53mins): on-set documentary on the making of The Touch In Conversation with Liv Ullman (2018, 60 mins): the actress interviewed on stage by Geoff Andrew at BFI Southbank Sheila Reid: The Touch (2018, 21 mins) the only British actress to appear in a Bergman film recalls working on The Touch Fully illustrated booklet with new writing by Geoff Andrew and Vic Pratt, and full film credits