Inga Landgre Movies

Originally titled Broderna Mozart, the Swedish The Mozart Brothers stars Etienne Glaser as a highly unorthodox opera director. His plans to stage Don Giovanni in bizarre, inappropriate costumes, and to have the orchestra members take singing roles, enrages the conservatory opera company that has engaged him. Glaser is motivated by the "voice of God"--God being in this instance Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose ghost commiserates with the innovational director from time to time. The Mozart Brothers was itself directed by Suzanne Osten, daughter of a leading Swedish film critic. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The title of this Swedish romantic drama translates as When the Rain is Falling; it was released in the US as Sunshine Follows Rain and in England as When the Rain Follows the Dew. Director Gustav Edgren adapted the screenplay from the bestselling novel by Margit Soederholm. Set in rural Sweden, the plot is a simple one, concerning the romance between a farm girl and an itinerant fiddler. The story is sentimental in the extreme, but handled with taste and class by a superb cast. Helping to "sell" the film in the US was the presence in the cast of up-and-coming film favorites Alf Kjellin and Mai Zetterling, who'd previously been teamed in Alf Sjoberg's Torment (1944). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Filmed in 1948, Swedish filmmaker Gustav Molander's Eva gained an American release the following year. The eponymous Eva, played by Eva Stiberg, is the cast-off girlfriend of headstrong railroad engineer Bo (Birger Malmsten). When Bo's new bride is killed in a train accident, he returns to faithful Eva. Out of tragedy blossoms a new life for both hero and heroine. Unlike such previous Molander protegees as Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, Eva Stiberg did not go on to a particularly stellar career. Eva should not be confused with the 1962 French film of the same name, though both contain strikingly similar plot elements. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young intern in residence at a hospital allows his sentiments to affect his performance. The doctor seems more sensitive than his colleagues and is more affected by the human suffering than his more experienced cohorts. He tries to balance his personal feelings and the cold realities of medical professionalism, and he eventually considers switching to veterinary medicine. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Not even Ingmar Bergman was prone to discuss his obscure 1955 production Dreams. While on vacation, photo agency owner Susanne (Eva Dahlbeck) hopes to rendezvous with her married lover. The man's wife puts the kibosh on this, whereupon Susanne enters into an affair with diplomat Sanderby Gunnar Bjornstrand. This liaison ends unhappily, leaving her sadder and wiser at vacation's end. So annoyingly confusing is Dreams that at times it resembles a Woody Allen parody of Bergman, rather than the genuine article. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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 story of director Suzanne Osten's mother Gerd (Malin Ek) is told in this film set against the backdrop of a neutral Sweden in World War II, and the comings and goings of creative talents as they develop their own visions and capacities. Osten's mother had always wanted to produce a film, and although the inspiration was there after a 1939 meeting with Jean-Louis Barrault in Paris, even advice from notables such as Berthold Brecht (though insensitively given) and love affairs that offered some spiritual encouragement, could not stem the gradual and inexorable erosion of her mental stability. By 1944, Gerd was ill enough to be diagnosed as insane. As Gerd destabilizes, her mental afflictions are called forth in avant-garde, surreal visions that move in and out of the reality that carries the woman forward each day. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Colin Nutley's prequel to his 2001 film Deadline, Paradise tells the story of how tabloid reporter Annika Bengtzon (Helena Bergström) cracked her first big story. On the low-end of the totem pole at the tabloid where she is employed, Annika receives a call from Rebecca Björkstig (Lisa Nilsson) encouraging her to write a story about a domestic abuse protection and recovery foundation known as Paradise. Having had first-hand experience with that problem, Annika is sympathetic to Paradise's aims. After taking a call from a distressed woman named Aida (Suzanna Dilber) in which Aida claims to have an abusive significant other, Annika puts Aida into the Paradise program. However, Annika does some investigative work and discovers that Aida may be involved in a shooting and that Paradise may not be what it seems. Paradise is an adaptation of one of a popular series of novels written by Liza Marklund. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Military comedies were as popular in Scandinavia in the postwar era as they were in America -- perhaps even more so. Soldat Bom stars comedian Nils Poppe, who also penned the script. The film traces his various misadventures in uniform, his frequent tiltings with the "brass" and civilian authority figures, and his luck (or lack of it) with women. Inga Landre is very easy on the eyes as Poppe's leading lady. Soldat Bom did quite well financially in Sweden, but business tended to trail off in other countries. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Scripted (but not directed) by Ingmar Bergman, Best Intentions is a multilayered backwards glance at the courtship of Bergman's own parents. Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler) is a struggling theology student in the year 1909. His intended, Anna Aakerbloom (Pernilla August, who married director Bille August while the film was in progress) is from a well-to-do family. Despite the expected class differences and personality clashes, love-or at least mutual understanding-prevails. But after a harsh, spare few years as the wife of a clergyman, Anna yearns for the more bountiful pleasures of her family home. Bergman writes himself into the proceedings as a mewling infant. The current three-hour theatrical version of Best Intentions (original title: Den Goda Viljan) was simultaneously prepared as a six-hour TV miniseries, which ran in Europe, Scandanavia, and Japan. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Endlessly imitated and parodied, Ingmar Bergman's landmark art movie The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) retains its ability to hold an audience spellbound. Bergman regular Max von Sydow stars as a 14th century knight named Antonius Block, wearily heading home after ten years' worth of combat. Disillusioned by unending war, plague, and misery Block has concluded that God does not exist. As he trudges across the wilderness, Block is visited by Death (Bengt Ekerot), garbed in the traditional black robe. Unwilling to give up the ghost, Block challenges Death to a game of chess. If he wins, he lives -- if not, he'll allow Death to claim him. As they play, the knight and the Grim Reaper get into a spirited discussion over whether or not God exists. To recount all that happens next would diminish the impact of the film itself; we can observe that The Seventh Seal ends with one of the most indelible of all of Bergman's cinematic images: the near-silhouette "Dance of Death." Considered by some as the apotheosis of all Ingmar Bergman films (other likely candidates for that honor include Wild Strawberries and Persona), and certainly one of the most influential European art movies, The Seventh Seal won a multitude of awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi