Tomorrow is the centenary of the birth of one of cinema’s greatest directors, Ingmar Bergman, and to celebrate, The Criterion Collection has announced of their most expansive releases ever. This November, they will release Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, a 39-film box set comprising nearly all of his work, including 18 films never before released by Criterion. Curated akin to a film festival, the set features Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Films, with many double features in between. The set also features 11 introductions and over five hours of interviews with the director himself, six making-of documentaries, a 248-page book, and much more.
As we await for its November 20 release, check out an overview from Criterion below, as well as the box art, the trailer, and the full list of films, in curated order. One can also see much more about each release and the special features on the official site.
With the box set Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema, releasing this November, the Criterion Collection is celebrating the director’s film work with a selection of thirty-nine of his features, including his directorial debut, Crisis (1946), and his farewell, Saraband (2003), completed three and a half years before his death, on July 30, 2007, at the age of eighty-nine. We have programmed the movies with the concept of a film festival in mind, kicking off with an opening-night showing of Smiles of a Summer Night and anchored by three centerpiece programs: a Scenes from a Marriage and Saraband double feature, The Seventh Seal, and Persona. We wrap things up with Fanny and Alexander as our closing-night title. We believe these selections represent some of the pinnacles of Bergman’s filmmaking, as well as moments that forever altered cinema history.
Interspersed among those five programs are nineteen others that present double features and individual titles, several of them previously released by Criterion (such as Summer with Monika, The Magician, and Autumn Sonata) and many of them new to the collection (A Lesson in Love, Brink of Life, and From the Life of the Marionettes, to name a few). When pairing and ordering these films, we thought not necessarily chronologically but in a way that we hope will be thought-provoking—making thematic links, showing both how Bergman developed as an artist and how many of his preoccupations (love, death, faith, intergenerational relationships) remained constant throughout his life.
This retrospective is accompanied by a book that aims to enrich your experience of watching the films. In the main section, you’ll find a chapter on each program in the series. This section includes some of our favorite essays from the body of writing on Bergman’s cinema that we have commissioned from scholars and critics over the past thirty years, as well as a fresh crop of new essays by writers from a wide variety of backgrounds and fields, each of whom contributes his or her unique voice to the ongoing discussion about Bergman’s body of work. In addition, woven throughout the writing about Bergman is a selection of things the filmmaker wrote or said himself, whether in scripts, journals, books, or letters, whether on camera or to another writer.
The box set includes the following:
OPENING NIGHT: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Crisis (1946)
A Ship to India (1947)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
To Joy (1950)
Summer Interlude (1951)
Summer with Monika (1953)
Dreams (1955)
A Lesson in Love (1954)
CENTERPIECE ONE: Scenes from a Marriage-
Television version (1973) | U.S. theatrical version (1974)
Saraband (2003)
From the Life of the Marionettes (1980)
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Shame (1968)
The Passion of Anna (1969)
Fårö Document (1970)
Fårö Document 1979 (1979)
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Winter Light (1963)
The Silence (1963)
The Virgin Spring (1960)
CENTERPIECE TWO: The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Devil’s Eye (1960)
All These Women (1964)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
The Rite (1969)
The Magician (1958)
The Magic Flute (1975)
After the Rehearsal (1984)
The Touch (1971)
The Serpent’s Egg (1977)
CENTERPIECE THREE: Persona (1966)
Thirst (1949)
Port of Call (1948)
Cries and Whispers (1972)
Waiting Women (1952)
Brink of Life (1958)
Autumn Sonata (1978)
CLOSING NIGHT: Fanny and Alexander–
Television version (1983) | Theatrical version (1982)