Anita Björk Movies

This Swedish-Finnish-Danish drama, combining black-and-white and color, was directed by Lena Koppel (replacing Anders Wahlgren, who departed shortly after filming began). Erik (Krister Hendriksson) attends his father's funeral with his teenage daughter Sara (Oyana Lugn-Rodriguez) and his mother Karin (Anita Bjork). Outside the church, Estonian-speaking violinist Viivi offers greetings from her father, but Karin, who never speaks about her own WWII life in Estonia, tells Viivi to leave. That night in Stockholm, Erik has a chance encounter with Viivi, invites her to his place, and sleeps with her, upsetting Sara in the morning. For money, Viivi plays her violin in the Stockholm subway, and as the days pass, she falls in love with Erik. Viivi and Erik's relationship takes a strange turn when Karin finally begins to speak about past events in her life, and a shocking secret is revealed. The film's music track is by Swedish pop star Lisa Nilsson and her boyfriend Henrik Janson. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

This well-executed biographical docudrama is a plunge into the madness (and the sanity) of a writer living life on its rawest edges. Agnes Von Krusenstjarna (Stina Ekbland) was a Swedish novelist (1894-1940) whose works ranged from the idyllically romantic to crushingly sardonic, sexually explicit autobiography. Von Krusenstjarna teamed up with the eccentric bisexual David Sprengel (Erland Josephson) and continued to suffer bouts of mental instability that Sprengel felt were best cured by sexual abandon. Von Krusenstjarna was not a model of emotional health when she first met Sprengel. She had inherited madness from her family while at the same time passionately rebelled against the narrow-minded mores of her genteel but poor parents. With his own wildly unorthodox behavior, Sprengel both helped and hindered Von Krusenstjarna throughout their turbulent relationship. Audiences will be enthralled by the clash of Von Krusenstjarna's inner and outer realities, but should be aware there is an abundance of sexually explicit material here. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

When a powerful industrialist dies unexpectedly, his estate goes to his next of kin under the terms of an apparently benevolent will. However, if the family members are unable to agree to receive their share of the estate, all his properties and holdings will go to a cancer charity. At first, everyone in the family is in accord, and all goes smoothly. However, eventually one of the older inheritors begins to make waves. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Obviously inspired by French filmmakers such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Danish director Astrid Henning-Jensen crafted a psychologic triangle-drama about a student (Lone Hertz) who falls for an older newspaper columnist (Ebbe Rode). He is married, however (to beautiful Swedish actress Anita Bjørk) and is not at all ready to leave her to start a whole new family. It is all a bit on the dour side with the young girl a bit too analytical for her tender years and the literary critic a boring old fop. As always, director Henning-Jensen is good at capturing fleeting moments but there simply isn't enough material here. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

This effective literary drama is one of the later films in the long career of Swedish director Anders Henrikson whose cinematic work began in 1936 and continued through 1965. The film is based on two stories by writer August Strindberg, ~On Payment~ and ~The Doll's House~ (not Ibsen's famous play, but Strindberg's parody of it). In the first story, a tragedy, director Henrikson takes on the role of a sexually unassertive husband who has to somehow contend with his wife's dislike of sexual contact. In the second story, Mai Zetterling stars as the primary female character in a comedy about love, marriage, and conflict between a husband and wife. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this multi-faceted Ingmar Bergman film, rich in dramatic and comic elements, three wives pass time in a summer house, awaiting the returns of their husbands, by entertaining each other with recollections of past marital traumas. In the first recollection, the sexually unfulfilled Rakel (Anita Bjork) shares a bathhouse, and more, with a former lover, Kaj (Jarl Kulle). When her emotionally withdrawn husband (Karl-Arne Holmsten), an antiques collector, returns and discovers the incident, he retreats to a garden hut and vows to kill himself. But he is dissuaded from self-destruction by his older brother, who blithely reassures him that an unfaithful wife is better than no wife! The narrator of this episode wearily allows that her husband is little more than a child. Marta (Maj-Brit Nilsson), the storytelling wife of the second episode, recalls her love affair and marriage to a Parisian artist (Birger Malmsten) whose family disapproved of the relationship. Included in her tale is a vivid child birthing. The third episode is a comic classic in which Bergman regulars Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Bjornstrand play emotionally estranged spouses who rekindle their marriage while trapped in an elevator. Kvinnors Väntan, which closes with the resolution of a framing tale involving the elopement of two younger lovers, shows Bergman in complete mastery of the film medium. Whether manipulating close-ups during an emotional give-and-take seduction or employing symbolic imagery to emphasize the joy of becoming a parent or merely allowing consummate pros to indulge in slapstick, he proves himself unfailingly adept at all facets of filmmaking. This is one of several lesser-known but nonetheless impressive Bergman films from the mid-1950s. ~ Les Stone, Rovi

Gustav Molander's Woman Without a Face (originally Kvinna utan Ansikte) is distinguished by a screenplay by no less than Ingmar Bergman. Not a remake of Molander's A Woman's Face, as one might assume at first glance, the later film concentrates on the emotional turmoil experienced by an artist named Ruth (Gunn Wallgren). Unable to reach out to her friends and loved ones, Ruth puts her fate in the hands of the duplicitous Victor (George Funkqvist), who is Satan in everything but name. One wonders how this quintessentially Bergmanesque material would have been handled with Bergman himself in the director's chair. In America, Woman Without a Face was sold on the reputation of his male lead, up-and-coming matinee idol Alf Kjellin. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi