Essential Bergman: Persona/Autumn Sonata/Wild Strawberries/The Seventh Seal (DVD)

Four films from the celebrated Swedish writer-director Ingmar Bergman. 'The Seventh Seal' (1957) was Bergman's first big international success. Max von Sydow plays a disillusioned knight who returns from the crusades to find his homeland swept by the plague. Confronting the figure of Death himself (Bengkt Ekerot), the knight engages him in a game of chess to decide the fate of his soul.

In 'Wild Strawberries' (1957), aged professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) is travelling by car to his old alma mater, where he is to receive an honorary degree. Accompanied by his daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) who is travelling to meet her estranged husband, the Professor finds himself the subject of unsettling visions from his past, recalling lost loves and his own failed marriage. As the pair are interrupted by a youthful love triangle and a feuding older couple Isak is forced to confront his own coldness, and the possibility that his life has been wasted.

'Autumn Sonata' (1978), explores the relationship between a mother and daughter, who get together after seven years of estrangement. Ingrid Bergman plays the self-absorbed concert pianist mother with Liv Ullman as her resentful daughter.

Finally, in 'Persona' (1966), Elizabeth (Ullmann) is a famous actress who is taken ill and left without speech. While convalescing on the coast, she is cared for by Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) and, silenced by the effect of her - possibly psychosomatic - illness, finds that her nurse does the talking for both of them. Gradually, the two women's personalities merge and the boundaries between their identities begin to blur.

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