Themes: Mothers and Daughters, Haunted By the Past
Main Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Lena Nyman, Halvar Björk, Erland Josephson, Georg Lökkeberg
Release Year: 1978
Country: SE/WG/NO
Run Time: 97 minutes
Plot
Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and Sweden's most honored director, worked together for the first and only time in this intensely personal drama about the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is an acclaimed concert pianist who is visiting her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann), the wife of a parson in a rural community, for the first time in seven years. While Charlotte and Eva struggle to be civil, there is a deep emotional gulf between them. Eva resents her mother for not caring enough for her as a child, feeling that Charlotte was more interested in her career and her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), who is severely handicapped and can only communicate through inarticulate noises. Charlotte, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with the fact that Helena now lives with Eva, and she is still coming to terms with the emotional devastation of her husband's recent death. Herbstsonate, released in America as Autumn Sonata, earned Ingrid Bergman some of the most enthusiastic acclaim of her career; she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and she won the same honor from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. It was also her last theatrical release; she would appear in only one more project, a TV movie about the life of Golda Meir, before her death in 1982. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
The first and only time Ingmar Bergman and Ingrid Bergman worked together for the screen, Autumn Sonata is an intense yet frequently overlooked family drama. It is excessively talky, and rightly so, with the two main protagonists holed up in a country estate after a seven-year separation to duke out their problems in a passionate dialogue. The tense mother-daughter relationship is deeply investigated, with Ingrid as Charlotte, the successful career mother, and Liv Ullman as Eva, the neglected and put-upon daughter. With a sickly sister struggling to survive in the next room, these actors stir up some heated emotions and stormy conversation. The scene where each woman performs Chopin on the piano is a moving portrait of the power exchanges at work in their relationship. Both actresses get a chance to expand on their usual film personas. As Eva, Ullman is typically timid before exploding with confrontational energy. Ingrid Bergman shows a darker emotional side as Charlotte, her classic beauty-queen face covered in tears and photographed in intimate close-ups. Diagnosed with terminal cancer right before shooting, she tinges the already brutally personal events with a mournful subtext. The look of the film is almost as stunning as the performances. Though it dates the film to the '70s, the earthtone colors of oranges, reds, and yellows are used throughout as an excellent thematic accompaniment to the melancholy mood of regret, pain, and catharsis. Made toward the end of Ingmar Bergman's career during his "chamber film" phase, Autumn Sonata marked the last theatrical appearance of Ingrid Bergman. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Gunnar Björnstrand - Paul; Eva von Hanno - Nurse; Linn Ullmann - Eva as a child; Ame Bang-Hansen - Uncle Otto; Marianne Aminoff - Charlotte's private secretary; Mimi Pollak - Piano instructor; Knut Wigert - Professor
Credit
Inger Pehrsson - Costume Designer, Ingmar Bergman - Director, Sylvia Ingemarsson - Editor, Anna Asp - Production Designer, Sven Nykvist - Cinematographer, Katinka Farago - Producer, Lew Grade - Producer, Martin Starger - Producer, Anna Asp - Set Designer, Ingmar Bergman - Screenwriter
Autumn Sonata (Swedish: Höstsonaten) is a 1978Swedishdrama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film stars Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann and Lena Nyman. It tells the story of a celebrated classical pianist who is confronted by her neglected daughter. It was Ingrid Bergman's last performance in a major theatrical feature film, and the film won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1979 Golden Globe Awards.
The plot focuses on a prominent concert pianist, Charlotte Andergast (Ingrid Bergman), who has been neglectful and dismissive of her children, whom she has not seen in over seven years. Charlotte decides to make a visit to her eldest daughter, Eva (Liv Ullmann) at her remote house, where she lives with her husband, Viktor (Halvar Björk). Upon arrival, Charlotte discovers that her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), who is mentally and physically disabled (and was placed in an institution by Charlotte) is living with and being taken care of by Eva. Wounded by the neglect and selfishness of her mother, Eva begins to spill all of the things she has ever wanted to say to Charlotte, and as the evening progresses, the tension culminates to a wave of harsh words and exposure of true feelings that change their mother-daughter relationship forever.
