Harriet Andersson Movies
Trained as a dancer, Harriet Andersson worked her way up from the chorus in Swedish musical revues to supporting parts in films. Impressed by her work in a previous picture, director Ingmar Bergman fashioned a vehicle specifically tailored to Harriet's talents, Summer With Monika (1953). Exuding an earthy, sexually insatiable screen image, Harriet gained international fame with her next Bergman project, Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), in which her slatternly character committed many of her worst indiscretions in the nude. Never confined to any one characterization, Harriet proved to be one of the most versatile members of the Bergman stock company: some of her finest work can be seen in Through a Glass Darkly (1961), and, as the dying Agnes, in Cries and Whispers (1973). She remained with Bergman all the way up to his last theatrical feature, Fanny and Alexander (1982), in which she was cast as Justina. Harriet Andersson won a Venice Film Festival award for one of her few non-Bergman projects, To Love (1964), directed by her husband Jorn Donnor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Set in a small fictional town in the U.S. during the 1930s, Lars von Trier's Dogville was filmed in a studio with a minimal set and features narration by John Hurt. On the run from a group of gangsters, Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the small mining town of Dogville. Town philosopher Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) takes her in and strikes a deal with her: She'll work for the townsfolk in exchange for a safe place to hide; after two weeks the people will vote for her to either stay or go. Grace agrees to the terms and ends up meeting the locals, including the town doctor (Philip Baker Hall), shopkeeper (Lauren Bacall), and apple farmer (Stellan Skarsgård). Eventually, Grace's standing in the town takes a downward shift as the search for her intensifies. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicole Kidman, John Hurt, (more)
This moving, finely-wrought portrayal of legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist was directed by his son Carl-Gustav Nykvist -- a noted filmmaker himself. Spanning from long forgotten kiddie flick in 1945 to Woody Allen's Celebrity (1997), Nykvist's career came to an abrupt end when he was diagnosed with a rare disorder that affects his speech. Though the film explores Nykvist's upbringing and turbulent private life (an ugly divorce, the suicide of one of his sons, an affair with Mia Farrow), the emotional heart of the film is his celebrated collaboration with auteur Ingmar Bergman, with whom Nykvist made some of his most enduring work, including Winter Light (1962) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973). As Bergman recalls his own career, he notes, "I don't miss making films, but I miss the collaboration with Sven." ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Woody Allen, Bibi Andersson, (more)
- 2000
Nine of Sweden's leading actresses are brought together in this unconventional comedy-drama about a group of actresses awaiting a casting announcement. A major American film producer is looking for a Swedish actress to play the title role in a big-budget remake of the classic Greta Garbo vehicle Queen Christina, and a handful of women who were in talks for the role wait with bated breath for the decision to be declared. Rebecca (Lena Endre), married to hunky matinee idol Ake (Mikael Persbrandt), is spending her 40th birthday waiting for word on the role. Alexandra (Suzanne Reuter) will be shooting a TV commercial, to be directed by Rolf (Brasse Brannstrom). Rolf used to be involved with Cecilia (Marie Richardson), who lately is nearly as well known for the fact that she's pregnant and not identifying the father as she is for her acting. Cecilia appears on a morning chat show with Georgina (Ewa Froling), who used to be in love with Gregor (Peter Haber), Alexandra's current husband. Stella (Helena Bergstrom) is a defiantly out lesbian who is having an affair with Karin (Marika Lagercrantz), the wife of film director Magnus (Rolf Lassgard). Stella also happens to be starring in Magnus' latest project, along with Ake and Molly (Pernilla August). Meanwhile, Git (Gunilla Roor) is in a session with her analyst, trying to come to terms with her feelings about her work, and Evior (Stina Ekblad) is in rehearsal for a musical, and reaching the regrettable conclusion that she can neither dance nor sing. In keeping with the film's tangled onscreen relationships, Helena Bergstrom, who plays a lesbian sleeping with her director's wife, is married to Colin Nutley, Gossip's writer and director. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pernilla August, Helena Bergström, (more)
- 1999
A young man and an elderly woman forge an unusual friendship in this Swedish drama. Aspiring rock musician Lukas (Stefan Norrthon) has no desire to work in father's auto shop, so when he finds out that his family has an apartment on Sweden's west coast, he heads out there to take advantage of the privacy and free rent. However, when he arrives, he discovers that the flat has been sublet to Marja (Harriet Andersson), a 69-year-old woman who has decided it's time to write her memoirs. Marja does not intend to share her home with a twentysomething guitar player, and Lukas tries to find a place to stay with two fellow rockers, Greger (Roberto Jelinek) and Bamse (Alexander Skarsgard), who are planning to head out for Germany. But when Marja's computer starts acting up, she makes Lukas an offer: he can stay with her in exchange for taking dictation. He reluctantly agrees, and he soon finds himself caught up in Marja's story of her troubled childhood and problematic relationship with her father. Leading lady Harriet Andersson was a veteran of several classic Ingmar Bergman films, while Alexander Skarsgard is the son of noted actor Stellan Skarsgard. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harriet Andersson, Stefan Norrthon, (more)
- 1996
Those with a special love for Swedish films and who are familiar with actresses Harriet Andersson and Bibi Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom will be most delighted by this documentary interview held at the palatial French retreat of noted late filmmaker Mai Zetterling. The trio of actresses have ostensibly gathered to pay tribute to Zetterling, but during the course of their day also reminisce about their own careers and the illustrious figures, including Ingmar Bergman, they have worked with. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1995
This anthology offers five vignettes from different directors and different countries. The fifth entry is "Open Doors," from Sweden. It follows the strange affinity felt between two unmarried middle-aged people who begin to discover each other after the doors to their respective apartments are removed for repairs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
Mari (Inger Lise Winjevoll) can't get along with anybody either at home or at school, except for one teacher who is similarly an oddball. Mari is confrontative, and wears clothes which express her feelings of not fitting in. It upsets her to learn that the sympathetic teacher, Miss Kjaer (Harriet Andersson), is retiring. Thus, it not only pleases her but undoubtedly reassures her family when the two get together for a series of adventures over the summer break. Together, they each find some way of becoming reconciled with their lives. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1990
The dark recesses of a troubled psyche come to the light of day in this psychological thriller. In the story, Richard (Boman Oscarsson) is a young international art smuggler, who moves into the apartment of his cartoonist half-brother, who has disappeared. Once established there, increasingly strange mental states arise in his mind, and he sees (or seems to see) strange things going on around him. In addition, he has difficult encounters with his ailing mother and with a former girlfriend. As the experiences grow more numerous and intense, he decides that it is vital for his sanity that he discover what has become of his missing brother. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Boman Oscarsson
- 1989
Maria (Karina Skands) is an 18-year-old, late-blooming woman who has for years been a gifted violinist. She live in the slums of Copenhagen and has led a sheltered life often marked by poverty and cruelty. Due to her consuming musical passions -- fueled by the expectations of her overprotective father -- the beautiful Maria is unaware of her own attractiveness. She feels the first stirrings of love with Jonny (Ole Lemmeke), but she leaves him when he turns out to be a repressed homosexual. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Karina Skands, Ole Lemmeke, (more)
- 1987
In this drama, based on a stage play by Agneta Pleijel, an entire family, including grandparents, their children, and the grandchildren (and their lovers, husbands and wives) have gathered to celebrate the family matriarch's birthday. In this dialogue-heavy production, the celebration provides the discontented family members with an opportunity to voice their complaints about their lives and against one another as loudly as possible. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sif Ruud, Margareta Byström, (more)
- 1983
The real Rakenstam, the subject of this fictional treatment of his life from 1942-1945 before his imprisonment, had romantic liaisons with hundreds of women over a three-year period and managed to scam large amounts of money from 120 of them, thriving off each one and somehow managing to make each believe she was the only woman in his life. He was 42 at the time he started these exploits, and even after he was caught because of a blackmailer, the women not only refused to sue him, but they filled his jail cell with roses. While his deception was a work in progress, there were many moments of anxiety (he had been engaged to two of the women) as he tried to juggle the women, pay off the blackmailer, and maintain his identity as a businessman or banker. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gunnar Hellstrom, Lena Nyman, (more)
Though he made allusions to his own life in all of his films, Fanny and Alexander was the first overtly autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Taking his time throughout (188 minutes to be exact), Bergman recreates several episodes from his youth, using as conduits the fictional Ekdahl family. Alexander, the director's alter ego, is first seen at age 10 at a joyous and informal Christmas gathering of relatives and servants. Fanny is Alexander's sister; both suffer an emotional shakedown when their recently-widowed mother (Ewa Froling) marries a cold and distant minister. Stripped of their creature comforts and relaxed family atmosphere, Fanny and Alexander suddenly find their childhood unendurable. The kids' grandmother (Gunn Wallgren) "kidnaps" Fanny and Alexander for the purpose of showering them with the first kindness and affection that they've had since their father's death. This "purge" of the darker elements of Fanny and Alexander's existence is accomplished at the unintentional (but applaudable) cost of the hated stepfather's life. Ingmar Bergman insisted that Fanny and Alexander, originally a multipart television series pared down to feature-film length, represented his final theatrical film, though within a year after its release he was busy with several additional Swedish TV projects, and his final work, the 2003 Saraband (also produced for Swedish television), eventually received global theatrical distribution. Oscars went to Fanny and Alexander for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography (Sven Nykvist), Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pernilla Allwin, Bertil Guve, (more)
- 1979
A British writer goes to live in a Spanish village while he looks into the mysterious life of a 19th century wanderer who was allegedly slain by La Sabina, a mythical lady dragon. The writer becomes lovers with an American visitor and then falls in love with an enigmatic beauty from town. Things get really confusing when the writer's good friend arrives with his wife. When the writer's all-out campaign to seduce the local woman fails, tragedy ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carol Kane, Jon Finch, (more)
- 1979
Set in the 1930s, in this story a 16-year-old boy is forced to come to grips with several of life's unpleasant realities. He lives in a large, rather grand house. The house is run by a member of the Swedish nobility (a Countess) as a bordello, and the boy's father is its manager. Calamity strikes when the boy's father is having a liaison with a married woman whose husband is simultaneously (and unknown to him) being murdered in the basement by the criminals who usually assist the Countess in running her illegal empire. They plant evidence along with the dead man's body in the father's truck. The boy has caught wind of the plot and takes steps to keep it from succeeding. His father is arrested, but he has accumulated some evidence which should clear his name. Meanwhile, the boy has entered into a liaison of his own with the Countess' secretary. Director Vilgot Sjoman, best known in the U.S. for his film I Am Curious, Yellow based this drama on his novel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harald Hamrell, Viveca Lindfors, (more)
- 1977
In his appalling failure to communicate, the father of one teenaged and one nearly grown boy manages to inflate the tension in their relationships to tragic proportions. One boy has returned from study abroad in the U.S. with a suitcase full of Elvis and a whole host of notions which have no place in Sweden. The younger boy's aspirations are dashed by his father's coldness to him following his failure to win an athletic contest. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harriet Andersson
- 1975
Tvaa kvinnor is two separate shorter films gathered under one title. The first, "The White Wall," stars Harriet Andersson as a divorcee, with a son to raise, who finds her pleasure where she can. The movie shows her picking her son up at school and looking for (unskilled) office work. The second, "Five Days At Falkoebing," chronicles the experience of a young actress during her return to her childhood home. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harriet Andersson, Lena Nyman, (more)
- 1974
Despite having sponsored films by Ingmar Bergman, and many others, director Kenne Fant was subjected to an incredible amount of ad hominem abuse when he released this film. Fant, an actor and later a director, managed to offend many sensitive types during his chairmanship of the State Film Institute and of Svensk Filminsustri AB. The futuristic story concerns the persecution of a schoolteacher who commits the crime of encouraging his students to think for themselves and uses an example from physics to illustrate his point. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Erland Josephson, Harriet Andersson, (more)
Cries and Whispers stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Thulin as the sisters of dying cancer patient Harriet Andersson. Both sisters have already had brushes with death: Ullman has had an affair which prompted her husband's suicide, while Thulin has long wanted to do away with herself, at one point mutilating her own vagina out of self-hatred. As for Andersson, she has been in pain so long that she feels as though she's in the midst of death-in-life. With her two sisters wrapped up in their own problems, Harriet turns to her housekeeper Kari Sylwan for comfort; Sylwan has herself suffered the death of a child, and has developed a philosophical attitude towards impending doom. One of the most influential moments of the film -- when two of the sisters share the innermost thoughts that they'd kept from one another for so many years -- is filmed without benefit of dialogue, with the music of Chopin (enhanced by cinematographer Sven Nykvist's carefully selected camera angles) "speaking" for the ladies. While Cries and Whispers only won the Oscar for cinematography, the film did very well for itself in international awards contests. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, (more)
- 1970
Anna (Harriet Andersson) is a 40-year-old anesthesiologist who takes a working vacation with her teenage daughter (Maarit Hyttinen) and their maid (Pertti Melasniemi). She turns down her lover's request to marry because she believes the union will not maintain their status as equals. Next door to the trio lives a boozy ex-politician (Papani Perttu) and his teenage son (Tapio Rautavaara). The maid and the neighbor boy engage in a passionate affair while Anna reflects on her middle age and examines her changing values in regards to life, love and her career. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harriet Andersson
- 1968
This 99-minute film constitutes the first half of Robert Siodmak's mammoth two-part epic Der Kampf um Rom (Fight for Rome). The film depicts the Goths' sacking of Rome in 526 AD. No expense was spared in bringing this story to the screen: for example, Siodmak utilized six companies of Rumanian cavalry for the battle sequence, and the epic packs in an all-star cast including Laurence Harvey as Celhegus, Orson Welles as Justinian and Sylva Koscina as Theodora. The film carefully lays a groundwork of corruption and infighting, suggesting that the siege of Rome was virtually justified. Screenwriter Ladislas Fodor (a former government agent best known for his espionage yarns) adapted his script from the best-selling novel by Felix Dahn. The second half, Der Kampf um rom 2: Der Verrat (which also clocks in at just over 1.5 hours) was issued in 1969, a year after the first; Four years after that (c. 1973), the two parts of Der Kampf um Rom were edited together, cut down to 94 minutes, and distributed as a single entry in the United States.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurence Harvey, Orson Welles, (more)
- 1968
This Swedish feminist drama focuses upon three women in a traveling troupe of thespians performing Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Each of the women has some serious problems and fears to overcome. The husband of one has two lovers. The lover of another will not marry her, and the third's husband stays home to care for the kids. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, (more)
- 1968
Old morals fall by the wayside as a young couple agrees to have a child out of wedlock. The woman is a young veterinarian who is drifting apart from her lover. She agrees to have his baby even though their future as a couple is clouded, and they vow to stay together at least until the baby is born. Open discussions with friends about love, sex, mortality and emotional needs are featured between the couple and their friends. The couple forgoes the traditional relationship of marriage and long-term fidelity, allowing for a new found freedom to escape the confining unions of past generations. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Agneta Ekmanner
- 1967
In this heavy drama, a woman goes on a tumultuous train ride to South America, has a number of affairs, get involved in a murder and finds herself in a brothel. Later she finds herself pursued by one of her train conquests as she returns to New York to become a star dancer. Time passes and she boards another train. Here she is assaulted by a masked man who demands that she take off her clothes. In the morning she wakes up alone. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harriet Andersson, Erick Wedersøe, (more)
