Lissi Alandh Movies

In this drama set in a Scandinavian hospital in 1915, the individual stories of three pregnant women about to give birth are presented. The women come from a different social classes and have disparate views about the impending births. The middle-class woman married a servant of a wealthy family. She doesn't love her husband, nor does she care much about her child, whom she conceived out of spite. The baby is stillborn, and the woman sheds nary a tear. The second woman became wild and sexually irresponsible after she was seduced as a young woman by a much older man. Dividing her time between modeling and robbery, the woman ends up sleeping with the son of the family the middle-class woman's husband works for. The son is willing to support his bastard provided the wild woman marry his homosexual friend and pretend the child is his. She agrees. The third woman is introverted. As a youth, she had a short-lived lesbian affair in school. She then fell in love with an archaeologist who impregnated her. He refuses to acknowledge the child as his. This enrages the woman who joins a feminist movement and dedicates her life to removing the stigma of having babies out of wedlock. Of the three, she is the only one who really wants her child. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The third entry in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy about faith and redemption (with Through A Glass Darkly and Winter Light) is a stark and enigmatic allegory fueled by subtle performances from Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom. Thulin plays Ester, a translator and intellectual, who is traveling back to Sweden on a train with her younger sister Anna (Linblom) and Anna's son Johan (Jorgen Lindstrom). They stop in the town of Timuku and check into an old hotel in a foreign land where the language cannot be understood by the three travelers. Ester, who suffers from a terminal lung disease, is very protective towards Anna; but Anna resents being tied down by her sickly sister, and she leaves the hotel room, picking up a waiter (Birger Malmsten in a nearby café. Returning to the hotel room, Anna tells Ester about her sexual encounter with the waiter, and Ester becomes sexually aroused. Anna leaves for another room in the hotel to continue making love with the waiter. Johan helps Ester track Anna down Anna, and Anna and the waiter proceed to make love a third time. This provokes a violent and biter argument between the two sisters. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

This rich, powerful Ingmar Bergman film charts the frustrations and humiliations of several circus performers. The circus's portly owner, Albert (Ake Gronberg), recalls a humiliating incident involving the company's clown, Frost (Anders Ek), who discovered his wife, Alma (Gudrun Brost), swimming nude before a band of cheering soldiers. Having concluded his recollection, Albert visits his estranged wife, Agda (Annika Tretow), who realizes that he has made little money with his circus endeavor. While Albert endures the humiliating encounter with his wife, his jealous mistress, Anne (Harriet Andersson), retaliates by yielding to a seductive local actor, Frans (Hasse Ekman), then realizes that she has been exploited and debased. Later, the drunken Frost informs Albert of Anne's sexual indiscretion, whereupon Albert determines to thrash Anne's cynical lover. In the ensuing altercation, however, Frans manages to thwart Albert's bullish attacks and deliver a series of punishing blows. Beaten and degraded, Albert ponders suicide, then decides to avenge himself on unfaithful women by killing the company's bear, beloved by the provocative Alma, whose betrayal of Frost has so haunted Albert. Following the bear's demise, the company departs to another town. Gycklarnas Afton is full of powerful performances and staggering sequences, including the legendary flashback in which Frost finds his wife cavorting nude before the soldiers. In this scene, played with almost hysterical intensity, Frost, dressed as a clown, tearfully carries his nude wife from the water, past the soldiers, and back to the circus tent. The soundtrack's jarring contrast between sheer silence and a blaring brass band, coupled with the black-and-white cinematography's emphasis on glaring sunlight, generate a mood of considerable tension and unease. This extraordinary scene ranks among Ingmar Bergman's greatest feats and readily establishes Gycklarnas Afton as an unflinching examination of the human condition. ~ Les Stone, Rovi

Froken Julie (Miss Julie) is adapted from August Strindberg's trenchant one-act play of the same name. The title character, a young woman of prestige and property, is played by Anita Bjork. Taught by her mother to hold all men in contempt, Miss Julie nonetheless enters into an affair with misanthropic valet Jean (Ulf Palme). Their passion for one another is tempered by their mutual animosity, and the results are catastrophic. Playwright Strindberg's intense dislike for womanhood will probably alienate half the audience of Miss Julie, but director Alf Sjoberg's handling of the material is masterful--so much so that this film, together with Frenzy (1947), cemented Sjoberg's international reputation as a filmmaker of distinction (despite the efforts by American censors to "water down" the film). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi