Historically, Sweden is notoriously neutral and prides itself on being a peace-loving nation and as such has never endured the humiliation of occupation or the horrors of day and night bombardment. Ingmar Bergman, indisputably Sweden's greatest director, had asked himself how he would have behaved should his country have been overrrun and this moral dilemma has borne fruit in what must be his most despairing, pessimistic and arguably most powerful film.
Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow again play a tortured couple but here their lives are changed forever by the outbreak of war. Her gradual transformation from impatience to compassion and his journey from gentle complacency to utter heartlessness are deeply affecting whilst Gunner Bjornstrand gives one of his greatest performances for this director as the Quisling whose summary execution is devastating.
It is filmed starkly by Bergman regular Sven Nykvist who once more shows his mastery at harnessing natural light. The editing is again by Ulla Ryghe and Bergman's long takes are riveting. Although the two leading characters are musicians there is no score here, in keeping with Bergman's films of the sixties where music is used either sparingly or not at all.
The film was written a year before the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia and before the war in Vietnam reached such catastrophic proportions and as Bergman himself noted, "had these two things already happened, my film would have worn a different aspect."
It had a mixed reaction on its release and even now, for reasons I cannot fathom, has its detractors. Bergman was accused of being apolitical, artistically aloof and of sitting on the fence but the passage of time shows his film to be alarmingly prescient. Although it could hardly be described as a war film, its harrowing depiction of fear, complicity and the shattering effect of conflict on ordinary, non-combatant citizens, marks it out as one of the greatest 'anti-war' films whose relevance is timeless.
Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow again play a tortured couple but here their lives are changed forever by the outbreak of war. Her gradual transformation from impatience to compassion and his journey from gentle complacency to utter heartlessness are deeply affecting whilst Gunner Bjornstrand gives one of his greatest performances for this director as the Quisling whose summary execution is devastating.
It is filmed starkly by Bergman regular Sven Nykvist who once more shows his mastery at harnessing natural light. The editing is again by Ulla Ryghe and Bergman's long takes are riveting. Although the two leading characters are musicians there is no score here, in keeping with Bergman's films of the sixties where music is used either sparingly or not at all.
The film was written a year before the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia and before the war in Vietnam reached such catastrophic proportions and as Bergman himself noted, "had these two things already happened, my film would have worn a different aspect."
It had a mixed reaction on its release and even now, for reasons I cannot fathom, has its detractors. Bergman was accused of being apolitical, artistically aloof and of sitting on the fence but the passage of time shows his film to be alarmingly prescient. Although it could hardly be described as a war film, its harrowing depiction of fear, complicity and the shattering effect of conflict on ordinary, non-combatant citizens, marks it out as one of the greatest 'anti-war' films whose relevance is timeless.