SUMMER INTERLUDE (Ingmar Bergman, 1951)

In Ingmar Bergman’s first outstanding film, Summer Interlude, Marie (Maj-Britt Nilson, superb) is a ballerina who, after the death years ago of her lover, Henrik, withdrew behind a “protective wall” that imprisoned her. The discovery of the boy’s diary returns her to the island where they fell in love one summer and compels her to […]

THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergman, 1956)

In the 1950s a handful of films generated interest among Americans in international cinema: Federico Fellini’s La strada (1954), Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (1954), Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957), François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) and, also by Bergman, The Seventh Seal. These films were largely responsible for creating the “art house crowd” that sought out […]