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Fanny and Alexander (1983)

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From Time Out New York

Since Bergman’s death in July, New York has mounted several touching tributes to the great Swede, including a revival of Monika and screenings of Persona (introduced by none other than Bibi Andersson) and Shame. The IFC Center’s premiere of the five-hour version of Fanny and Alexander (which the director far preferred to the three-hour cut released in theaters) may be the most moving homage yet.

The saga of the Ekdahl family, spanning approximately 1907–1908, famously contains several Bergman biographical elements (a severe patriarch) and a summation of lifelong themes (the struggle to believe in God). What will strike both Bergman acolytes and neophytes most in this almost-farewell to cinema (2003’s Saraband would be his coda) is the incredibly detailed, compassionate view of childhood. Children had rarely figured into Bergman’s oeuvre prior to Fanny and Alexander, functioning primarily, if at all, as portents of the bizarre: One thinks of the sickly, bespectacled boy in Persona and the odd lad who meets the dwarves in The Silence.

This film might be considered the year of magical thinking for ten-year-old Alexander (the amazing, spindly-limbed Guve). Clearly the director’s surrogate, Alexander, the son of actors, is first seen playing with a toy theater, whose motto reads “Not for pleasure alone.” He, along with his younger sister (Allwin), will soon be thrust from the never-ending delights of a warm extended family into the horrors of an unbearably severe second home. Our young protagonist will be obsessed with death and see ghosts everywhere. Never has the prison of childhood seemed so inescapable.

Author: Melissa Anderson

Time Out New York Issue 640: January 3–9, 2008

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Mar 02 2008 13:57 I saw the 5 hour preferred version,which was how it was released on tv(like Scenes from a Marriage) instead of the 3 hour theatrical version.made as his swansong to his film career.He imbues childhood with all the warmth and magic he possibly could.This film could have been called merely 'Alexander' but as it stands she is his ear,foil and sister in solidarity. Bergman has made a semi-autobiographical film only he has changed the order of things around a bit.He came from a severe Lutheran background in which he was very repressed by his pastor father.In the film he is not born into this family,it is his step-family,that his mother marries into when her actor husband dies. The children having formerly come from a big extended bohemian family of actors have to suffer the rigours of their new,cruel Pastor father who chastises them to separate truth from fiction.The contrast between the old household of the heart and the new household with it's tones of black and white couldn't be more different.The children are helped to escape in a chest by a friend of the family.The mother-by now pregnant- can only get away later after sedating her husband.The large family is reunited and babies are born,one to a maid by a philandering uncle.The pastor dies in a house fire.You feel in this film although Bergman speaks of God,faith and utilizes ghosts he has cast out the tormenting demons of his youth as he glorifies the magic of art and the imagination.The tone throughout is light hearted,the colour schemes are beautiful and the cinematograhy exquisite.An actress-Harriet Anderson-plays an elderly nanny who scares the young siblings with frightening stories.The lady who plays the grandmother is a famous Interpreter of Stindberg who gets to read for a part in his 'Dreamplay' in the closing scene with young Alexander lying on her lap.this can be compared to the best of Bergman and placed alongside the two trilogies.

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