Waiting Women (Ingmar Bergman, 1952)

Cast: Anita Björk, Eva Dahlbeck, Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Gunnar Björstrand, Karl-Arne Holmsten, Jarl Kulle, Aino Taube, Håkan Westergren, Gerd Andersson, Björn Bjelfvenstarm. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, Gun Grut. Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer. Production design: Nils Svenwall. Film editing: Oscar Rosander. Music: Erik Nordgren. 

Ingmar Bergman's Waiting Women is also known by its slightly racier American title, Secrets of Women. Both titles are apt. Four women are waiting at the summer home of the Lobelius family for their husbands to arrive. Each is married to one of the four Lobelius brothers, who run the family business. When Annette (Aino Taube) complains about the lack of intimacy in her marriage to Paul (Håkan Westergren), the other three respond with stories about their marriages. Rakel (Anita Björk) tells how her confession to an affair with an old flame caused her husband, Eugen (Karl-Arne Holmsten), to threaten suicide. Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) tells of her affair with the youngest of the Lobelius brothers, Martin (Birger Malmsten), who wanted to break free from the family business and become an artist in Paris. Marta discovered that she was pregnant with Martin's child, but when she went to tell him, his brothers had just arrived to tell him that their father has died and he's needed back home to run the company. She decided to have the baby on her own, but Martin returned to marry her. The oldest, Karin (Eva Dahlbeck), tells of attending a party with her husband, Fredrik (Gunnar Björnstrand), who scolded her on the way home afterward for wearing a dress that he thinks is too décolleté. We have already seen how pompous Fredrik can be in the scene in which the brothers try to persuade Martin to give up la vie bohème and join the business, but Fredrik loosens up a lot when he and Karin are trapped overnight in an elevator. It's one of Bergman's best early films, with his usual bittersweet comedy touch that he would perfect in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), though it's decidedly pre-feminist in its outlook: Contemporary viewers may wonder why marriage seems to be the only object in view for these intelligent women.  

Thirst (Ingmar Bergman, 1949)

Cast: Eva Henning, Birger Malmsten, Birgit Tengroth, Hasse Ekman, Bengt Eklund, Gaby Stenberg, Naima Wilfstrand. Screenplay: Herbert Grevenius, based on stories by Birgit Tengroth. Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer. Production design: Nils Svenwall. Film editing: Oscar Rosander. Music: Erik Nordgren.

Port of Call (Ingmar Bergman, 1948)

Cast: Nine-Christine Jonsson, Bengt Eklund, Mimi Nelson, Berta Hall, Brigitta Valberg, Sif Ruud, Britta Billstein, Harry Ahlin, Nils Hallberg, Sven-Eric Gamble, Yngve Nordwall, Nils Dahlgren. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, Olle Länsberg. Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer. Production design: Nils Svenwall. Film editing: Oscar Rosander. Music: Erland von Koch.  

A Ship to India (Ingmar Bergman, 1947)

Cast: Holger Löwenadler, Anna Lindahl, Birger Malmsten, Gertrud Fridh, Naemi Briese, Hjördis Patterson, Lasse Krantz, Jan Molander, Erik Hell, Åke Fridell, Douglas Håge. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, based on a play by Martin Söderhjelm. Cinematography: Göran Strindberg. Production design: P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Tage Holmberg. Music: Erland von Koch.

The Touch (Ingmar Bergman, 1971)

Bibi Andersson and Elliott Gould in The Touch

Cast: Bibi Andersson, Elliott Gould, Max von Sydow, Sheila Reid. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: Ann-Christin Lobråten, P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Siv Lundgren. Music: Carl Michael Bellman, Peter Covent, Jan Johansson. 

I didn't believe a minute of The Touch, and not just because Elliott Gould was so terribly miscast as the male lead in a romantic drama. The film struck me as formulaic in so many predictable ways, particularly the heavy-handed contrast of the milieu from which Karin Vergerus (Bibi Andersson) comes -- pristine, middle-class, Nordic -- and the one from which her lover, David Kovac (Gould), comes -- sloppy, intellectual, Jewish. There's also a thudding use of symbols, like the long-immured statue of the Virgin and Child that's infested with a species of beetles that has lain dormant until David, an archaeologist, uncovers it. It's a film with nothing new to tell us, or at least nothing that Ingmar Bergman hasn't told us in better films about troubled marriages and destructive love affairs. It was heavily panned on release and a box office failure, but it has since been revived by admirers who find it carefully crafted and subtly unsettling. I admire the craft, including Sven Nykvist's always evocative photography and Andersson's dedicated performance, but it still seems to me a flawed and obvious story.  

Brink of Life (Ingmar Bergman, 1958)

Ingrid Thulin and Bibi Andersson in Brink of Life

Cast: Eva Dahlbeck, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Barbro Hiort af Ornäs, Erland Josephson, Max von Sydow, Gunnar Sjöberg, Ann-Marie Gyllenspetz, Inga Landgré. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, Ulla Isaaksson, based on novels by Isaksson. Cinematography: Max Wilén. Production design: Bibi Lindström. Film editing: Carl-Olov Skeppstedt. 

For all the frankness of its subject matter, Ingmar Bergman's Brink of Life is as formulaic as a Hollywood movie of the 1950s. Three women are sharing a room in the obstetrics ward of a hospital. One of them, Cecilia (Ingrid Thulin), has miscarried and is being treated for bleeding. Another, Stina (Eva Dahlbeck), is in almost the opposite condition: She has gone well past term in her pregnancy and is there hoping that labor will be induced if it doesn't occur right away. The third, Hjördis (Bibi Andersson), is only in her third month, but she has experienced some bleeding -- perhaps, we learn, because she's unwed and doesn't want the baby, so she's been trying to cause a spontaneous abortion. Cecilia is in the throes of depression, blaming herself for the miscarriage because neither she nor her cold, priggish husband, Anders (Erland Josephson), was entirely certain that they wanted a child. Again, Stina is the precise opposite: She's rapturous about having a baby, and so is her husband, Harry (Max von Sydow). Between these polarities, Hjördis is fighting with the social worker who is trying to advise her on how she can live after the baby arrives. The best advice is, of course, to go home to her parents, but since she left precisely because she doesn't get along with her mother, she strongly rejects the idea of facing the disapproval she expects to encounter from her. It's all a setup for the kind of plot resolutions you might expect: Cecilia grows stronger and chooses to face up to her disintegrating marriage and a childless future. Stina loses the baby in a prolonged and difficult labor. And Hjördis discovers that maybe her mother isn't so bad after all. There's a feeling of anticlimax about these eventualities. That the film works at all is the product of the performances of the three actresses, along with Bergman's steadily unsentimental direction, which makes the predictability of the story more tolerable than it might be in a Hollywood tearjerker. Still, I can't help feeling that the stories of what happens to Cecilia, Stina, and Hjördis after the film ends would make a more interesting movie.   

The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969)

Cast: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Erik Hell, Sigge Fürst. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Siv Lundgren.

Sometimes linked with Hour of the Wolf (1968) and Shame (1968) as a third element of a trilogy set on Fårö island, Ingmar Bergman's The Passion of Anna is a characteristically intense working out of themes of grief and guilt, involving two couples whose lives intersect against a backdrop of mysterious instances of cruelty toward animals. I find it one of Bergman's more forgettable films, but it has strong admirers. 

The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

Cast: Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Jörgen Lindström, Håkan Jahnberg, Birger Malmsten. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Ulla Ryghe. Music: Ivan Renliden.