Fanny and Alexander

In 1907, young Alexander, his sister Fanny, and their well-to-do family, the Ekdahls, live in a Swedish town, running a moderately profitable theatre. At Christmastime, the Ekdahls hold a Nativity play and later a large lively Christmas party. The siblings' parents, Emilie and Oscar, are happily married, with Oscar managing the theatre on behalf of the matriarch, Helena Ekdahl. Helena, a widow, reminisces humorously with long-time family friend, Isak Jacobi, about the time her husband caught them in flagrante delicto in an embrace, fondly remembering how their friendships endured. The siblings' womanizing uncle, Gustav Adolf, carries on with the nursemaid, Maj, with the forbearance of his wife, Alma, who jokes with the women in the family about her husband’s latest fling. The siblings' other uncle, Carl, privately bemoans himself humorlessly as a failure to his tolerant wife, Lydia. The joyful Christmas festivities at the Ekdahls abruptly end when Oscar suddenly dies from a stroke. Shortly thereafter, Emilie marries Edvard Vergérus, the local bishop and a widower, who supported Emilie in her deep grief, advantageously pressing his suit. Emilie and her children move into the Vergérus home where he lives with his mother, sister, aunt, and maids. The children's stepfather, the bishop Edvard, soon reveals himself to be a strict and controlling authoritarian. The relationship between the bishop and Alexander is especially cold, as Alexander invents stories, for which Edvard punishes him severely. Quickly realizing her mistake, Emilie asks for a divorce, which Edvard will not consent to; though she may leave the marriage, this would be legally considered desertion, placing the children in his custody. Meanwhile, the rest of the Ekdahl family has begun to worry about their condition, and Emilie secretly visits her former mother-in-law, Helena, revealing she is pregnant. During Emilie's absence, Edvard confines the children to their bedroom, ostensibly for their safety. There, Alexander shares a story, claiming he was visited by the ghosts of the Vergérus's children, who revealed the bishop was responsible for their deaths. The maid Justina reports the story to Edvard, who responds with corporal punishment. After Emilie returns, the Ekdahl family friend, Isak Jacobi, helps smuggle the children from the house. They live temporarily with Isak and his nephews in their store. Emilie's former brothers-in-law confront Edvard to negotiate a divorce, using the children, the bishop's debts, and the threat of a public scandal for leverage, but Edvard is unmoved. Emilie, now in the later stages of her pregnancy and still living with Vergérus, refuses to restore the children to Edvard's home. Emilie manipulates Edvard into drinking a large dosage of her bromide sedative from her cup. As the medication takes effect, she explains to him that she intends to flee the home as he sleeps. He drowsily threatens to follow her family and ruin their lives but falls unconscious. After Emilie escapes, Edvard's dying Aunt Elsa accidentally overturns a gas lamp, setting her bedclothes, nightgown, and hair on fire. Engulfed in flames, she runs through the house, seeking Edvard's help, but he, too, is set aflame. Although partially incapacitated by the sedative, he disentangles himself from Aunt Elsa, but he is badly burned and dies shortly thereafter. Alexander had fantasised about his stepfather's death while living with Isak and his nephews, Aron and Ismael Retzinsky. The mysterious Ismael explains that fantasy can become true as he dreams it. The Ekdahl family reunites for the christening celebration of Emilie's and the late bishop's daughter as well as the extra-marital daughter of Alexander's uncle, Gustav Adolf, and the maid, Maj. Alexander encounters the ghost of the bishop who knocks him to the floor, and tells him, "You can never escape me." Emilie, having inherited the theatre, hands Helena a copy of August Strindberg's play A Dream Play to read and tells her that they should perform it together onstage. Initially scoffing at the idea and declaring Strindberg a "misogynist," Helena takes to the idea and begins reading it to a sleeping Alexander. ==Cast==

The cast consists of: The Ekdahl house '''The Bishop's house''' '''Jacobi's house''' The theatre ==Production==

Development Director Ingmar Bergman conceived of Fanny and Alexander while working on his 1980 film From the Life of the Marionettes, and wrote the screenplay at Fårö in summer 1979. Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander to be his last feature film, but he wrote several screenplays afterwards and directed for television. He told the press he decided to retire, because, "I don't have the strength any more, neither psychologically nor physically". Edvard is based on Erik, and like Edvard, Erik was raised in a family almost completely made up of women. Erik and Ingmar also often conflicted over "truth" and honesty, much as Edvard and Alexander do. The story Alexander tells of being sold to a circus resembles one Ingmar had told as a boy, and he was accosted by Erik much as Edvard lectures Alexander. However, Bergman also stated that "It has been suggested ... that 12-year-old Alexander is my alter-ego. But this is not quite true. Fanny and Alexander is a story, the chronicle of a middle-class, perhaps upper-middle-class family sticking closely together ... There's a lot of me in the Bishop, rather than in Alexander. He is haunted by his own devils". Bergman proposed the project to producer Jörn Donner, who said he could provide the budget if all production and costume design crew would be Swedish. Bergman initially doubted that Sweden alone had the manpower, but eventually caved, Donner said. The estimated budget of 40 million SEK made it the most costly Swedish film ever. To raise the $6 million, Donner and the Swedish Film Institute partnered with the French company Gaumont and West German TV. Bergman completed the screenplay by October 1980 and assembled a budget of $7 million, according to New York. Casting The project was announced in October 1980 with Liv Ullmann, Max von Sydow and Erland Josephson in lead roles; von Sydow was cast as Edvard, the bishop who Ingmar told the press resembled Erik Bergman. Bertil Guve was 10 when cast as Alexander. Bergman had seen Guve in a television film by Lasse Hallström and called for an audition with Guve, though the boy did not know who Bergman was. Bergman ultimately cast Guve, without sharing the story of Fanny and Alexander with him, recognising his imagination when he told a story about killing his own grandfather during the audition. Guve also said, "I asked Ingmar later why he chose me. He said it was because I acted with my eyes". Veteran actress Gunn Wållgren was cast as Helena, despite the fact that she was suffering from cancer, often concealing her pain during shots. She had developed an interest in acting after seeing Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and wanted a part like Kari Sylwan's in a film one day. Bergman also cast some of his real-life children, including Mats Bergman as Isak's nephew Aron, and Anna Bergman as Hanna Schwartz; Linn Ullmann was to play Alexander's older sister Amanda, but when Linn's school refused to give her a break for production, her father cut the character. Asp designed Oscar and Emilie's apartment with an Art Nouveau style. In designing Isak's residence, Asp worked from Bergman's memory of a Jewish antiques shop owner, looking for a labyrinth-style. Scenes were shot in chronological order, and Guve only learned the thrust of the story was his conflict with his stepfather during production. Guve developed a generally amiable relationship with Bergman and later Pernilla Allwin, and Allwin and Guve's habit of playing on bicycles between filming would dirty their costumes and cause the crew to rush to clean them. Guve also conflicted with Bergman when he laughed during a shoot, at which point Bergman reprimanded him and said that it was "the most outrageous, the most unprofessional behaviour" he had ever seen. Scenes were shot outside of Uppsala Cathedral, with the crew conflicting with the dean over whether an antenna could be removed. With Bergman suffering from influenza, his colleagues substituted for him in shooting Oscar's funeral scene with 500 extras and a brass band. At one point during production, a crossbeam fell over in the studio and nearly hit Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Other crew were injured in workplace accidents. One injury took place when a male stunt performer portraying the burning Aunt Elsa was actually burned by spilled napalm. Much of the production was recorded by Bergman and Arne Carlsson for the 1984 documentary, The Making of Fanny and Alexander. ==Themes and interpretations==

Critic Michiko Kakutani identified Fanny and Alexander as sharing marriage-drama and domestic themes as his Thirst (1949), Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and From the Life of the Marionettes. Professor Freddie Rokem wrote that, in contrast to Edvard's "rigorous and sterile" Protestantism, the Ekdahl Christmas party can include the Jewish Isak, as he is a dear friend of matriarch Helena Ekdahl, and this friendship is "utopian". While at Isak's, his nephew Aron Retzinsky brings out a puppet of God, or deus ex machina to which Alexander reacts with terror; he then tries to play down that fear, and is left to wonder how seriously to take the supernatural. Author Harry Perridon argued that when Alexander declares God "is a shit", he means God in Christianity, associating the deity with suffering in the world. After this point, true miracles in Bergman's universe have to come from a different source, Perridon wrote. The depiction of Jews in Sweden revolves around Isak, which academic Rochelle Wright argues is "far more nuanced" than in Bergman's previous The Touch (1971). Isak is not completely assimilated, but his presence in Sweden is presented as positive, as he stands for imagination, "magic and mystery", Wright wrote. Erland Josephson, who played Isak, described his performance as a stereotyped portrayal of a Jew, but with mystical and tragic elements, drawing on Jewish people and their history. Hayes argued that with its take on "time and space", the story hinted at Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah. The light that engulfs Isak when he screams after being beaten by Edvard calls on the light of the Kabbalah to vanquish evil, Hayes hypothesised. The scream may have invited "spiritual intervention", allowing the children's escape by rendering them invisible in Isak's trunk, while the children seemingly appear lying on the floor to Edvard. Törnqvist hypothesised that Jewish pantheism replaces Christian belief in "grace and punishment" in the story. Royal Brown argued that Isak's "cabbalistic magic and animism" is closer to the Ekdahls' Christianity than to Edvard's. Törnqvist identified Ismael as "one of the more enigmatic features" of Fanny and Alexander, commenting on the character as a fusion of elements. Ismael speaks the Finland-Swedish, and he is androgynous, being a male character played by a woman, Stina Ekblad. Ismael also says to Alexander, "Perhaps we are the same person". Author Daniel Humphrey also commented in Ismael's androgyny, conveying "queerness and foreignness" but presented as spiritually identical to Alexander. Additionally, Humphrey commented on the name, with Ishmael of the Bible being a bastard son of Abraham and progenitor of the Arab people, considered "paradigmatic" by Christians and Jews alike. A Dream Play author Strindberg had taken interest in the Ishmael character. Törnqvist also identified Ismael as matching Hamlet in education, intelligence, real or feigned insanity and anti-social nature. Hayes commented on the way Ismael holds Alexander, remarking it was "Alexander's erotic encounter with a man/a woman/himself". Critic Robin Wood and Richard Lippe argued Ismael directly replaces Oscar, dismissed by Alexander as not serving a purpose; Ismael instead brings danger and sexual ambiguity: Wood and Lippe observed Ismael touching Alexander and kissing Aron. The role of Ismael and Alexander's ritual in Edvard's death is uncertain: Ismael speaks of what will happen in the future in describing Edvard's death, but it can all be logically explained, with a police officer informing Emilie the death is legally accidental. ==Release==

While cinematic film stock was used in production, Bergman conceived of the presentation as a television miniseries, and there are different versions, presented as a miniseries and film. The longer version intended for television was the original. After completing production, Bergman had to edit the complete cut to 188 minutes for screenings in theatres, regretting losing much of the fantasy material. He remarked, "This was extremely troublesome, as I had to cut into the nerves and lifeblood of the film". West Germany on 8 October 1983, and the United States on 17 June 1983. The complete version runs 312 minutes. It was released in Swedish theatres in 1983, and screened at the 40th Venice International Film Festival in September 1983. It subsequently aired as a miniseries on Sveriges Television in four segments, and five episodes of unequal length at Bergman's demand. They ran 92, 40, 37, 60 and 90 minutes, beginning 25 December 1984. After debuting at the Swedish Film Institute on 16 September 1984, The Making of Fanny and Alexander aired with a television repeat of Fanny and Alexander in Sweden on 18 August 1986. In 1991, the Guinness Book of World Records listed the five-hour version as among the longest films in history. The entire miniseries ran on SVT1 in Sweden on 2 August 2007, with 10-minute newscast interruption, rendering it a two-part version. In Region 2, Artificial Eye released the five-hour version on DVD in 2002. In 2011 in Region A, The Criterion Collection published a Blu-ray edition including the theatrical version, the television version, and The Making of Fanny and Alexander. ==Reception==

Box office There were large audiences in Sweden at showings of Fanny and Alexander, including at the five-hour cut, making it the most popular box-office film Bergman had in his native country. It had 374,208 admissions in France and 165,146 in Germany. This amounted to minimal presence in the French box-office. Fanny and Alexander finished its run grossing $6,783,304 in North America. In 1992, Variety ranked it the 21st highest grossing foreign film in U.S. box office history, and the fifth-highest grossing Swedish film after 1967's I Am Curious (Yellow) and Elvira Madigan, Dear John (1964) and My Life as a Dog (1985). Critical reception Upon release in Sweden, the film received generally positive reviews, with Expressen critic Lasse Bergström approving of the portrayal of the Oscarian era. Critic Stig Larsson assessed it as Bergman's ironic take on his past filmography. Jönköpings-Posten posted a positive review on 7 February 1983, followed by a second critic in the same paper accusing the film of creating false joy on 21 February. The film ranked 10th on Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1983. Vincent Canby's contemporary review in The New York Times described it a "big, dark, beautiful, generous family chronicle"; Canby also praised the cast as "uniformly excellent". Roger Ebert awarded it four stars, assessing it as "a big, exciting, ambitious film", relatable to audiences though more specific in its story than Bergman's prior studies of faith and sex, and named it the 4th best film of 1983. Variety staff called it "a sumptuously produced period piece" blending "elegance with intimacy". For The Washington Post, Rita Kempley found the story more cheerful than past Bergman productions, highlighting Ewa Fröling and comparing her to Liv Ullmann. In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani compared the film's "generosity of vision" to the comedies of William Shakespeare. The Nation critic Robert Hatch compared it to Shakespeare's The Tempest as a final life-affirming work, featuring "magic with the casual authority of Prospero himself". Kerry Brougher denied it was Bergman's magnum opus, but still said it was "a thoughtful, graceful, beautifully filmed work". National Review critic John Simon wrote a negative review, calling it "overstuffed", and expressing lack of interest in Fröling and Guve as newcomers to Bergman's filmography. Ebert added it to his Great Movies list in 2004, hailing it as "astonishingly beautiful", crediting Sven Nykvist for "color and warmth". In 2010, The Guardian ranked the film eighth in its list of 25 greatest arthouse films. Reviewing The Criterion Collection Blu-ray, Andre Dellamorte wrote that despite the five-hour runtime, the story was uncomplicated but always interesting. The Observer quoted actor Matthew Macfadyen as saying the film "featured just the most extraordinary acting I'd ever seen". Macfadyen added that as a RADA student, the film was shown as "an example to follow – an example of people acting with each other". Polish film director Agnieszka Holland also praised it in 2012, saying both children and intellectuals could enjoy it and that it gives a very vivid portrait of another era. In his 2015 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin gave it four stars, identifying its emotions as "exquisitely expressed". Pauline Kael wrote a more mixed review, enjoying the merry atmosphere but writing the "conventionality" is "rather shocking", suggesting Bergman had moved to Victorian times to escape his usual eccentric viewpoints. The Guardian critic Alex Cox wrote a negative review in 2006, claiming there was no story for the first two of three hours, and that the analogy to Hamlet did not hold up as Alexander knows Edvard is evil, whereas Hamlet is uncertain if the Ghost is a demon and Claudius is innocent. Cox had not seen the longer version, but considered it might be better. In 1990, Fanny and Alexander was named the best film of the 1980s by Los Angeles Times by Sheila Benson, who called it "generous, ribald, reflective and radiantly life-affirming", and Michael Wilmington, and the third best by Newsweek critic David Ansen. In 2004, The New York Times also included the film on its list of "the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". Xan Brooks, in The Guardians Film Season, chose the film as the eighth "best arthouse film of all time". He described it as "an opulent family saga, by turns bawdy, stark and strange" with a rare abundance of "indelible supporting characters". In 2007, the film was ranked at No. 23 by The Guardians readers' poll on its list of "40 greatest foreign films of all time". The film was Voted at No. 44 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008. In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made, Fanny and Alexander was 84th among critics and 16th among directors. In the earlier 2002 version of the list, the film ranked 35th among critics and 19th among directors. Also in 2002, Sight and Sound magazine invited several critics to make a list of the best films of last 25 years and Fanny and Alexander was ranked at number three. In 2012 the film was voted at number five on the 25 best Swedish films of all-time list by a poll of 50 film critics and academics conducted by film magazine FLM. In 2018, the film was ranked 28th in BBC's list of The 100 greatest foreign language films. In 2022 edition of Sight & Sound's Greatest films of all time list the film ranked 53rd in the director's poll. Fanny and Alexander has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 45 reviews, with a weighted average of 9/10. The site's consensus reads: "Ingmar Bergman conveys the sweep of childhood with a fastidious attention to detail and sumptuous insight into human frailty in Fanny and Alexander, a masterwork that crystalizes many of the directors' preoccupations into a familial epic". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 100 out of 100 based on 8 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Accolades The film received six Academy Award nominations, winning four, including Best Foreign Language Film. It also received the third highest number of nominations of 1984, after Terms of Endearment and The Right Stuff (both released in 1983). The four wins was the most any foreign-language film had received at the Academy Awards to date until it tied the record with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Parasite (2019) and All Quiet on the Western Front (2022). Fanny and Alexander marked the third and final time Bergman won Best Foreign Language Film, after The Virgin Spring (1960) and Through a Glass Darkly (1961). Bergman did not personally attend the ceremony, while working on a stage production in Munich, so his award was accepted by his wife Ingrid von Rosen and Jörn Donner. The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at 1983 Venice Film Festival. It also won the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Award for Best Foreign Film. ==Legacy==

After ostensibly retiring from directing, Bergman completed After the Rehearsal in 1984. Bergman also conceived of a biographical project following his parents Erik and Karin Åkerblom, and in a press conference in August 1989, announced he planned a production that could be considered a follow-up to Fanny and Alexander and his 1987 autobiography The Magic Lantern. The resulting 1991–92 miniseries and film The Best Intentions was directed by Bille August and won the ''Palme d'Or at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. Bergman selected Bille August as director on condition that Fanny and Alexander'' actress Pernilla Wallgren star as Bergman's mother; she did under the name Pernilla August. Critic Vincent Canby also identified Ingmar's screenplay ''Sunday's Children, directed by Daniel Bergman and released in 1992, as "a continuation" of Fanny and Alexander and The Best Intentions'', and questioned if Ingmar had truly retired. Whereas Ingmar's recollections of Erik Bergman are damning in Fanny and Alexander, his study of his father is "far more forgiving" in The Best Intentions and ''Sunday's Children. After The Best Intentions'', Pernilla August played Ingmar's mother twice more, in the 1996 Private Confessions and 1997 In the Presence of a Clown. Following Bergman's death in 2007, PostNord Sverige decided to honour the director with a postage stamp depicting him directing Fanny and Alexander. In the two decades following the release, "Fanny and Alexander" decorations were also common in Swedish businesses at Jul. In 2017, Hallwyl Museum also exhibited costumes from Fanny and Alexander and other Bergman films. Stefan Larsson directed a stage adaptation of Fanny and Alexander for the Royal Dramatic Theatre, which traveled to Uppsala City Theater in 2012. It played at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in 2013. In 2010, stage adaptations also played in Finland, directed by Maria Lundström and Tiina Puumalainen, and Norway, where it was the biggest box office success in the National Theatre's history. Later, Stephen Beresford wrote an adaptation for The Old Vic in London, directed by Max Webster and starring Penelope Wilton. It was scheduled to debut February 2018. The film has exercised considerable influence on subsequent filmmaking, not only in Sweden. South Korean director Bong Joon-ho has listed it as one of his favourite films, and stated that it has "the most beautiful ending to a feature film career in the history of cinema". French director Arnaud Desplechin frequently cites Fanny and Alexander as a critical touchstone for his own career, and has labelled his own La Vie des Morts as "a complete rip-off of that film". He noted that "I saw Fanny and Alexander and then I became a director. Before, I was a technician, and after that film, I became a director." Fanny and Alexander is also listed as a favourite by filmmakers Barry Jenkins and Akira Kurosawa. ==See also==