He’s famed for his intense, philosophically bleak chamber dramas, but Ingmar Bergman’s expansive autobiographical film Fanny and Alexander found him in warmer, more celebratory mode.
The story of a brother and sister growing up in an upper-middle-class family in Uppsala in the 1900s, Bergman’s film – which exists both as a five-hour television version and a three-hour edit for cinemas – contains trademark scenes of marital infighting, desperate grief, and searching existential enquiry, with young Alexander inquisitively probing at the boundaries of God’s power while resenting the authoritarian hand of his priest stepfather. However, although Bergman is as attuned as ever to the anguish of life, there is also much that is fondly recalled, from toy theatres and magic lantern shows to family Christmases and favoured relatives.
