Folke Sundquist Movies

A young man learns the identity of his father's mistress after finding a teddy bear in the car after his father's fatal auto accident. He threatens to tell his mother about the affair unless the mistress pretends to be his fiancee. They end up falling in love, but she leaves soon after finding out that she is pregnant by the young man's father. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide

The Hour of the Wolf (original Swedish title: Vargtimmen) is Ingmar Bergman's spin on the demons that plague his fellow creative artists. Max von Sydow plays a painter who, while spending a summer in seclusion with his pregnant wife Liv Ullmann, is visited by bizarre and disturbing visions. Before long, Ullmann is also experiencing her husband's hallucinations; one of these, an old, faceless woman, advises Ullmann to read Von Sydow's diary. Doing so, Ullmann discovers that her husband has been cheating on her with Ingrid Thulin. In the subsequent domestic squabble, Von Sydow shoots and wounds his wife. The artist's punishment for this behavior is to have his lover, now dead, spring back to life and humiliate him in full view of Ullmann. Hour of the Wolf has something to say about the dangers of artists becoming too self-centered and self-involved; one hopes that most artists are not as thoroughly punished (or punishable) as Max Von Sydow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After exploring his disillusionment with religion in his previous films, Ingmar Bergman adopted a humanistic approach for this classic study in isolationism. Legendary Scandinavian director Victor Sjöström stars as Isak Borg, an aging medical professor who reassesses his life while journeying to his former university to receive an honorary degree. Borg travels with his estranged daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) and revisits many of the landmarks of his past, conjuring up memories of his family and of his onetime sweetheart Sara (Bibi Andersson). Returning to the present, he meets a teenage girl who resembles the long-departed Sara. She hitches a ride with the professor and Marianne, as do a ceaselessly bickering married couple. These new characters eventually become intertwined with Borg's hazy flashbacks and fantasies, as the old man recalls the disappointments and disillusionments that have left him cold and guilt-ridden, attributes emphasized when he encounters his equally cold and resentful son. Bookending Borg's odyssey of self-discovery are a series of symbolic images at the beginning of the film (a clock without hands, a man without a face) and a hauntingly beautiful finale, in which professor is beckoned back to the "perfect" world he left behind so many years earlier. This classic art movie remains one of Bergman's most accessible films and one of the most influential European art movies of its generation. Its intense focus on one man's thoughts, regrets, and memories set the tone for innumerable psychological character studies in its wake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Better known as One Summer of Happiness, Hon Dansade en Sommar was the most popular and financially successful of Swedish director Arne Mattson's romantic films. Based on the novel by Per Olof Ekstrom, the story revolves around the romance between college graduate Goran (Folke Sundquist) and farmer's daughter Kerstin (Ulla Jacobsson). Their plans to marry are stymied by the opposition of a local clergyman (John Elfstrom). Only after a devastating tragedy occurs does Goran realize the folly of allowing others to make decisions for him. Though Arne Mattson could have spent the rest of his career turning out Bergmanesque exercises like this one, he decided to switch creative gears and concentrate on Hitchcockian thrillers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide