Face to Face: A Film

by Ingmar Bergman

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394732065
• ISBN13: 9780394732060
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 118 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One Performance Never To Forget.,

This is a review on Ingmar Bergman's film "Face to Face" (1976) which had earned two Academy Award Nominations - for Best Directing (Ingmar Bergman) and Best Leading Actress (Liv Ullmann). For some unknown and strange reasons, the movie is not available on DVD or even on tape. *** This comment may contain spoilers *** As every one of Ingmar Bergman's films, "Face to Face" (1976) deals with Life, Love and Death. The Bergman's alter ego in the film is "a well-adjusted, capable and disciplined person, a highly qualified professional woman with a career, comfortably married to a gifted colleague and surrounded by what is called "the good things of life." It is this admirable character's shockingly quick breakdown and agonizing rebirth that I have tried to describe. I have also, on the basis of the material at my disposal, shown the causes of the disaster as well as the possibilities available to this woman in the future." (Ingmar Bergman) This seemingly successful woman who would attempt a suicide is played by Liv Ullmann and whatever has been said about her in this film as a psychiatrist who faces and struggles with her own nervous breakdown, still can not describe how she did it. For almost two hours, she is in every scene of the film, "lonely, ashamed", and facing unbearable nightmares of her past, struggling for her sanity. She gave, perhaps, the most powerful and unforgettable performance by any actress on the screen. She literally transforms herself in several different persons - her voice, facial expressions, the manner of speech, emotions - change with such a rapid speed and so effortlessly in front of you - it would take your breath away. I've never been as moved and fascinated by any performance on the screen as by Liv's in the film and I think the second time even more than the first one. Sure, it was a Bergman's film, his ideas, his anxieties; his "toothache" in the heart but it was Liv who lived through them and showed them with such powerful depth, honesty and selflessness that the film will always belong to her. This is one performance never to forget. "YES" - to the movie and YES!!! to Liv Ullmann