Criterion Collection (Firm)
1) Persona
Series
Criterion collection volume 701
Language
Swedish
Description
An actress has inexplicably gone mute; a young nurse cares for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that would prove to be one of cinema₂s most influential ideas.
Series
Criterion collection volume 237
Language
Swedish
Formats
Description
In turn-of-the-century Sweden, four men and four women of different classes attempt to navigate the laws of attraction. During a weekend in the country, the women collude to force the men's hands in matters of the heart, exposing their pretensions and insecurities along the way. Includes director-approved special edition features.
Series
Criterion collection volume 416
Language
Swedish
Description
The daughter of a rich businessman falls for her father's servant, and a battle of sexes and classes ensues. Bonus features includes interviews, video essay, and a booklet.
Series
Criterion collection volume 139
Language
Swedish
Description
A distinguished professor emeritus who lives alone with his housekeeper can only come to terms with his egocentricity by traveling back in time to his earliest youth, finding there the seeds of his failure as husband, lover, father. This film deals with the phenomena of old age wherein childhood memories return with ever-increasing clarity while great stretches of the prime of life vanish into obscurity. In Swedish with English subtitles.
Series
Criterion collection volume 178
Language
Swedish
Description
Ingemar is a working-class 12-year old boy who is sent to live with his uncle after his mother falls ill. There, he takes refuge from his troubles with the help of the town's warmhearted eccentrics. A bittersweet evocation of the struggles and joys of childhood and the pains of coming-of-age.
Series
Criterion collection volume 71
Language
Swedish
Description
An opera by Mozart, in which a handsome young man is enlisted to rescue the Queen of Night's daughter from an evil sorcerer.
Series
Language
Swedish
Description
In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of traveling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a game of chess for his life. The knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.
9) Shame
Language
Swedish
Formats
Description
An examination of the violent legacy of World War II and a scathing response to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Two musicians live in quiet retreat on a remote island farm, until the civil war that drove them from the city catches up with them there. Amid the chaos of the military struggle, vividly evoked by pyrotechnics and by Sven Nykvist₂s handheld camera work, the two are faced with impossible moral choices that tear at the fabric...
Series
Criterion collection volume 101
Language
Swedish
Description
A story of four women's search for spiritual peace. Agnes is dying of cancer and is visited one last time by her two sisters, Karin and Maria. These two become entangled in feelings of jealousy, manipulation and selfishness. Yet Agnes is able to transcend her sisters' pettiness to remember moments of staggering beauty as well as horror.
Series
Criterion collection volume 261 (262-264)
Language
Swedish
Description
Told through the eyes of Alexander and his sister Fanny, we see the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents, Oscar and Emilie, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company. Oscar's mother and brother are its chief patrons. After Oscar's early death, his widow marries the bishop and moves with her children to his austere and forbidding chancery. The children are immediately...
Series
Criterion collection volume 537
Language
Swedish
Description
A traveling magician bringing his potions and mystical items with him is challenged by the Minister of Health, who believes the magician to be a charlatan. Bonus features include an interview with the director regarding the film and various essays.
13) My life as a dog
Series
Criterion collection volume 178
Language
Swedish
Description
Tells the story of Ingemar, a twelve-year-old from a working-class family sent to live with his uncle in a country village when his mother falls ill. There, the boy finds both refuge from his misfortunes and unexpected adventure with the help of the town's warmhearted eccentrics.
Language
Swedish
Description
Using an innovative stylistic approach, director Vilgot Sjoman deliberately blurs the lines between the characters' lives and those of the actors portraying them. Lena, the film's protagonist is a true woman of the 60's in search of her own selfhood. She becomes a political activist, challenging traditional values on the issues of militarism, social equality and sexual liberation. The film was seized by U.S. Customs and released in the U.S. only after...
Series
Criterion collection volume 321
Language
Swedish
Description
A peasant girl is raped and murdered in 14th century Sweden. When her killers seek shelter in her father's house, he kills them to avenge her death. Soon a spring appears from where the girl was killed and her father sees this as a sign from above.
Series
Criterion collection volume 828
Language
Swedish
Description
Director Stig Björkman allows us unprecedented access to Ingrid Bergman's world, culling from the most personal of archival materials: letters, diary entries, photographs, and Super 8 and 16 mm footage Bergman herself shot and following her from youth to tumultuous married life and motherhood. Intimate and artful, this lovingly assembled portrait, narrated by actor Alicia Vikander, provides luminous insight into the life and career of an undiminished...
Language
Swedish
Description
This sequel to I am curious - yellow follows young Lena on her continuing journey of self-discovery. In Blue, Lena confronts issues of religion, sexuality and the prison system, while at the same time exploring her own personal relationships. Like I am curious - yellow, Blue freely traverses the lines between fact and fiction, employing a mix of dramatic and documentary techniques.
Series
Criterion collection volume 139
Language
Swedish
Description
Traveling to receive an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borgis, forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults and accepts the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, Wild Strawberries captures a startling voyage of self-discovery and renewed belief in mankind.
19) The magic flute
Language
Swedish
Formats
Description
A scintillating screen version of Mozart's beloved opera showcases Ingmar Bergman's deep knowledge of music and gift for expressing it cinematically. Casting some of Europe's finest soloists, the director lovingly recreated the baroque theater of Sweden's Drottningholm Palace to stage the story of the prince Tamino and his zestful sidekick Papageno, who are sent on a mission to save a beautiful princess from the clutches of evil.
Series
Criterion collection volume 477
Language
Swedish
Description
Filmed over several weeks, "Bergman Island" is an impressively intimate look at the waning hours of one of cinema's true legends. Granted unprecedented access to the man himself, Marie Nyreröd captures stories from Bergman that cover his entire life to that point. Bergman is remarkably candid, whether he's discussing his abusive father or his last directorial effort, Saraband. Even those not particularly interested in Bergman's cinema will find something...