Fanny and Alexander

Fanny and Alexander
Original Swedish release poster
Directed by	Ingmar Bergman
Produced by	Jörn Donner
Written by	Ingmar Bergman
Starring	Pernilla Allwin Bertil Guve Börje Ahlstedt Anna Bergman Gunn Wållgren Erland Josephson Mats Bergman Jarl Kulle
Music by	Daniel Bell
Cinematography	Sven Nykvist
Editing by	Sylvia Ingemarsson
Studio	Gaumont
Distributed by	Sandrew Film & Teater (Sweden) Gaumont (France)
Release date(s)	17 December 1982 (1982-12-17) (Sweden) 9 March 1983 (1983-03-09) (France) 8 October 1983 (1983-10-08) (West Germany)
Running time	312 minutes 188 minutes (Theatrical cut)
Country	Sweden France West Germany
Language	Swedish German Yiddish English
Box office	$6,783,304

Fanny and Alexander (Swedish: Fanny och Alexander) is a 1982 Swedish drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film won four Academy awards in 1984 and was nominated in six categories including Best Director (Ingemar Bergman) and Best foreign language film (won). It was originally conceived as a four-part TV movie and cut in that version, spanning 312 minutes. A 188-minute version was created later for cinematic release, although this version was in fact the one to be released first. The TV version has since been released as a one-part film; both versions have been shown in theatres throughout the world.

Plot

The story is set during 1907–09 (with an epilogue in 1910), in the Swedish town of Uppsala. It deals with a young boy, Alexander (Bertil Guve), his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin), and their well-to-do family, the Ekdahls. The siblings' parents are both involved in theater and are happily married until the father's sudden death through a stroke. Shortly thereafter, their mother, Emilie (Ewa Fröling), finds a new suitor in the local bishop, a handsome widower, and accepts his proposal of marriage, moving into his ascetic home and putting the children under his stern and unforgiving rule. He is particularly hard on Alexander, trying to break his will by every means, something Emilie had not expected. The children and their mother soon live as virtual prisoners in the bishop's house until finally the Ekdahl family intervenes, urged by Emilie who has secretly been in touch with her former mother-in-law Helena and told her of their dire situation.

With help from an old friend, a Jewish antiques dealer, as well as some magic, the children are smuggled out of the house, but the Ekdahls' attempts to bribe or threaten the bishop into divorce fail. Emilie, by now pregnant, slips her husband a sedative and flees as he sleeps, after which a fire breaks out and the bishop is burnt to death. In the meantime, Alexander has met the Jewish merchant's mysterious nephew, Ismael Retzinsky, and fantasized about his stepfather's death – it is as if Alexander's fantasy comes true as he dreams it. The story ends on a mainly happy, life-affirming note, with the christening of Emilie's and the late bishop's daughter as well as the illegitimate daughter of Alexander's uncle, Gustav Adolf Ekdahl (Jarl Kulle); this fruit of the lustful man's affair with the nanny, Maj, is cheerfully adopted into the Ekdahl clan. During the festivities however, Alexander encounters the ghost of the bishop who pushes him to the floor, signalling that he will never be completely free of him.

Cast

The Ekdahl house

• Gunn Wållgren as Helena Ekdahl (grandmother)
• Jarl Kulle as Gustav Adolf Ekdahl
• Mona Malm as Alma Ekdahl (Gustav's wife)
• Angelica Wallgren as Eva Ekdahl (Gustav och Almas' daughter)
• Maria Granlund as Petra
• Kristian Almgren as Putte
• Emelie Werkö as Jenny
• Allan Edwall as Oscar Ekdahl
• Ewa Fröling as Emelie Ekdahl (Oscar's wife)
• Bertil Guve as Alexander
• Pernilla Allwin as Fanny
• Börje Ahlstedt as Carl Ekdahl
• Christina Schollin as Lydia Ekdahl (Carl's wife)
• Sonya Hedenbratt as Aunt Emma
• Käbi Laretei as Aunt Anna von Bohlen
• Majlis Granlund as Miss Vega
• Svea Holst as Miss Ester
• Kristina Adolphson as Siri
• Siv Ericks as Alida
• Inga Ålenius as Lisen
• Eva von Hanno as Berta
• Pernilla August as Maj
• Lena Olin as Rosa
• Patricia Gélin as statue
• Gösta Prüzelius as Doctor Fürstenberg
• Hans Strååt as priest
• Carl Billquist as Jespersson, police
• Axel Düberg as witness
• Olle Hilding as witness

The Bishop's house

• Jan Malmsjö as Biskop Edvard Vergérus
• Kerstin Tidelius as Henrietta Vergérus
• Hans Henrik Lerfeldt as Elsa Bergius
• Marianne Aminoff as Blenda Vergerus
• Harriet Andersson as Justina
• Mona Andersson as Karna (maid)
• Marianne Nielsen as Selma (maid)
• Marrit Ohlsson as Tander (kitchen maid)
• Linda Krüger as Pauline
• Pernilla Wahlgren as Esmeralda
• Peter Stormare as young man
• Krister Hell as young man

Jacobi's house

• Erland Josephson as Isak Jacobi
• Stina Ekblad as Ismael Retzinsky
• Mats Bergman as Aron Retzinsky
• Viola Aberlé as Japanese woman
• Gerd Andersson as Japanese woman
• Ann-Louise Bergström as Japanese woman
• Marie-Hélène Breillat as Japanese woman

The Theatre

• Gunnar Björnstrand as Filip Landahl
• Heinz Hopf as Tomas Graal
• Sune Mangs as Mr Salenius
• Nils Brandt as Mr Morsing
• Per Mattsson as Mikael Bergman
• Anna Bergman as Hanna Schwartz
• Lickå Sjöman as Grete Holm
• Georg Årlin
• Gus Dahlström
• Ernst Günther as Rector Magnificus
• Hugo Hasslo as the singer

Production

Bergman intended the film to be his last feature, although he wrote several screenplays afterward and directed a number of TV specials. This most personal of his feature films was to some extent based on his and his sister Margareta's unhappy childhood under their extremely strict father, a Lutheran priest.

The film simultaneously documents many of Bergman's earlier star actors and a wide array of prominent Swedish film and stage actors of its era. Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow who, as leading Bergman actors, are conspicuously absent in this respect, had been his original intended stars as Emilie and Bishop Vergerus, but Ullmann was eventually unable to join due to other work obligations, while von Sydow didn't receive notification in time, apparently through mismanagement by his American agent. Bergman instead recruited newcomer Ewa Fröling and Jan Malmsjö, who is more widely known in Sweden as a highly gifted song and dance man, but who has also done many serious character parts on stage and on the screen. Bertil Guve, who gave a widely acclaimed performance as the boy Alexander, did not choose to pursue acting, but instead became a doctor of economics. However Pernilla Wallgren (later known as Pernilla August), who played the attractive nanny Maj, went on to star in other films, including The Best Intentions which Bergman wrote (but did not direct), and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace as Anakin Skywalker's mother.

Critical reception

Fanny and Alexander has inspired strong admiration and strong criticism.

Rick Moody commented retrospectively that the film "generated a wealth of controversy. Bergman has always seemed to breed conflict among cineastes (Phillip Lopate, for example, has written recently about the polarized reactions to Bergman in the sixties), but Fanny and Alexander, which the director announced as his final theatrical release, seemed to bring the critics out in even greater force, as though there were just the one remaining chance to be quoted on the subject. You either loved the film or hated it, and strong voices from the reviewing community lined up on either side. John Simon, in the National Review: “Few things are sadder than the attempt of a great artist, hitherto fully appreciated only by a minority, to reach the masses.”".

The Observer quotes actor Matthew Macfadyen as saying "it featured just the most extraordinary acting I'd ever seen." As a student, the film "was screened to us as an example to follow – an example of people acting with each other. They all knew each other well in real life, the cast, and they rehearsed for a long time and shot it very quickly. The result is extraordinary."

Xan Brooks, in The Guardian's Film Season, chose the film as his "No 8 best arthouse film of all time". He described it as Bergman's "self-styled farewell to cinema", "an opulent family saga, by turns bawdy, stark and strange." Few films, Brooks observes, "boast as many indelible supporting characters". He concludes that "by the time this film pitches towards that astonishing climax (bedsheets burning; magic working) one might even make a case for Fanny and Alexander as Bergman's most mature, clear-sighted and fully realised work."

Vincent Canby in the New York Times begins by noting that the film "it has that quality of enchantment that usually attaches only to the best movies in retrospect, long after you’ve seen them, when they’ve been absorbed into the memory to seem sweeter, wiser, more magical than anything ever does in its own time. This immediate resonance is the distinguishing feature of this superb film, which is both quintessential Bergman and unlike anything else he has ever done before." Canby finds it a "big, dark, beautiful, generous family chronicle"; the cast "are uniformly excellent". All of the film "has the quality of something recalled from a distance [,] events remembered either as they were experienced or as they are imagined to have happened. In this fashion Mr. Bergman succeeds in blending fact and fantasy in ways that never deny what we in the audience take to be truth." And, Canby emphasises, Bergman repeatedly refers "to this little world, which in the film refers to the Ekdahls' theater, a place of melodrama, comedy, dreams, magic, and moral order, in contrast to the increasing chaos of life outside."

Awards

The film was released in the United States in 1983 and won four Academy Awards:

• Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Director Ingmar Bergman)
• Best Cinematography (Sven Nykvist)
• Best Art Direction (Anna Asp, Susanne Lingheim)
• Costume Design (Marik Vos-Lundh)

Bergman was nominated for both Directing and Writing Original Screenplay but was not awarded. The film also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film.

Home media

Cover of the Criterion Collection 5-Disc DVD release of Fanny and Alexander

The uncut TV version of the film is available in DVD editions released by Artificial Eye (in Region 2) and The Criterion Collection (in Region 1). The Criterion Collection has released two DVD editions of the film: a five-disc set that includes the theatrical version, the television version, and a behind-the-scenes film, The Making of Fanny and Alexander as well as other supplements; and a two-disc set that includes only the 188-minute theatrical version and fewer supplements. The Criterion release marked the first time the television version of Fanny and Alexander had been available in North America.

See also

• Cinema of Sweden
• List of longest films by running time

External links

• Fanny and Alexander at the Internet Movie Database
• Fanny and Alexander at the Swedish Film Database
• Fanny and Alexander at AllRovi
• Fanny and Alexander at Box Office Mojo
• Fanny and Alexander at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Stig Bjorkman on the television version
• Criterion Collection essay by Rick Moody on the theatrical version