Marianne Aminoff Movies
- 1938
The Swedish historical drama The Great John Ericsson was better known to English-speaking filmgoers as Victor of Hampton Roads. The great Scandinavian director Victor Sjostrom plays the title character, a celebrated 19th-century Swedish inventor. Ericsson's fame rests largely on his development of a steel-armored, manned submarine, which took shape during the American Civil War as the ironclad vessel Monitor. The film's highlight is the battle between the Monitor and Merrimac, though the producers seem more interested in the romantic subplot involving a Confederate lieutenant and a Southern belle. Filmed to commemorate the Swedish-American Tercentenary, The Great John Ericsson could very well have served as one of the sources for the 1990 TV movie The Rose and the Jackal, which also spotlighted the Monitor-Merrimac confrontation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anders Henrikson
The Swedish June Night didn't get much American play until after its star, Ingrid Bergman, was firmly entrenched in Hollywood. Ingrid plays a small-town girl who becomes romantically involved with fast-and-loose sailor Gunnar Sjoberg. Injured in a shooting accident, the girl can't tell the police-or reveal the extent of her wounds-without revealing her "shameful" relationship with Sjoberg. This soap-operish endeavor was Bergman's final Swedish effort before her move to America. June Night was also distributed as A Night in June, just as if there were actually a difference. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1947
Her Kommer Vi stars Sture Lagervall, who co-directed the film with John Zacharias (seemingly everyone's collaborator in the Swedish film industry). The title translates as Here We Are Coming, a reference to the military troops depicted herein. This being a musical comedy, rest assured that the soldiering rookies have romance in mind rather than world conquest. The popular Gunner Bjornstrand heads the cast, proving anew just why he was so popular. Indistinguishable from the many other Swedish military comedies of the era, Her Kommer Vi is set apart by the excellent camerawork of Hilmer Ekdahl and the sprightly musical score by Ernfrid Ahlin and "Roland." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sture Lagerwall, Gunnar Björnstrand, (more)
- 1948
Var Sim Vag translates literally as Different Roads. Director Hasse Ekman stars as Tage Sundell, a busy doctor. So dedicated is Sundell to his work that his wife Birgit (Guna Wallgren) begins to feel like the proverbial fifth wheel. When the couple finally drifts apart to pursue their "different roads," they find out how much they truly depend upon each other. Played more for comedy than drama, Var Sim Vag was another feather in the cap of the multitalented Hasse Ekman, and a box-office winner in virtually every Scandinavian province. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hasse Ekman, Gunn Wållgren, (more)
- 1975
The military is just too silly for military cadet Jimmy (Goeran Stangertz) to stay in for very long, and he is released when his sense of humor causes too much trouble. While working as a substitute high-school teacher, he meets a 16-year-old girl who promptly gets him into her bed. Things go well for a while, but Jimmy reveals an irrationally quick temper when he finds out that the girl has also been sleeping with a schoolmate. His disruptive ways grow ever more intolerable until he is sent to a mental institution. His treatment there gives him some hope of returning to everyday life somehow. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Göran Stangertz, Ann Zacharias, (more)
- 1976
- R
Liv Ullmann plays Dr. Jenny Isakson, a psychiatrist who is taking a vacation while her husband Dr. Erik Isakson (Sven Lindberg) is elsewhere. Haunted by visions of an old woman, Jenny suffers from profound, inexplicable depression. Desperately in search of a escape from her doldrums, she has an affair with married doctor Tomas Jacobi (Erland Josephson). This only serves to spark an attack of hysteria for Jenny. Again visited by hallucinations of the old woman, she attempts suicide. While hovering between life and death, she imagines she sees all the people who've been influential in her life, and rails against them for causing her neuroses. Only while recovering does she learn who the spectral old woman is and why she is undergoing so harrowing an emotional experience. Like his later Scenes From a Marriage, Bergman's Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte) originated as a multipart TV series, which was then pared down into a two-hour-plus feature film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, (more)
Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and Sweden's most honored director, worked together for the first and only time in this intensely personal drama about the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is an acclaimed concert pianist who is visiting her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann), the wife of a parson in a rural community, for the first time in seven years. While Charlotte and Eva struggle to be civil, there is a deep emotional gulf between them. Eva resents her mother for not caring enough for her as a child, feeling that Charlotte was more interested in her career and her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), who is severely handicapped and can only communicate through inarticulate noises. Charlotte, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with the fact that Helena now lives with Eva, and she is still coming to terms with the emotional devastation of her husband's recent death. Herbstsonate, released in America as Autumn Sonata, earned Ingrid Bergman some of the most enthusiastic acclaim of her career; she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and she won the same honor from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. It was also her last theatrical release; she would appear in only one more project, a TV movie about the life of Golda Meir, before her death in 1982. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, (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)
