FilmAlicia The first time I saw "Face to Face," in the mid-1990's, it made a powerful impression on me. Of the ten or so Bergman films I've seen, this was the one that moved me the most, particularly because of Liv Ullmann's powerful, emotionally naked performance. So, when I learned that the AFI Silver Theatre was showing this film in honor of Bergman's 100th Birthday, I was eager to see it once more. I sent out the word to my movie-going friends, and got absolutely no takers. Apparently, not many people want to watch a film about a psychiatrist's descent into madness. So, I took myself off to the AFI yesterday, and watched the theatrical version of "Face to Face" once more.Although the film did not have the spiritual impact on me this time, I still found it to be a fascinating, and oddly, very hopeful film. It's no accident, I think, that Bergman followed up his previous film about madness, "Through a Glass Darkly," which had no hope, with a film that also takes its title from the same passage in Corinthians, perhaps the most beautiful passage in the Bible. I wondered about the title, and I believe that the most important relationship in this film was between Ullman's character, and the near stranger played by Erland Josephson.Although he is almost a stranger, he quite literally saves her life, both by finding her after her suicide attempt, and by being with her in her spiritual crisis. The "unbeliever's prayer" he offers her at the end it seems to be a call to put human relationships at the center of her life. Yet, in a way, I feel the closest relationship she will ever have in her life is with a man she will probably never see again, who is literally her savior. In the absence of God, only our relationships with other humans can save us. That's what I believe Bergman is trying to say in the film.

lasttimeisaw One of my film-watching habits is to amble around widely-ranging varieties of films from different directors, different eras, different genres and different countries, then randomly picks one under my own volition, from time to time, I may have a compulsive appetite towards Ingmar Bergman, though whose films often demands a longer interval between, almost 5 months after watching SUMMER INTERLUDE (1951, 7/10), my second entry of this year's Bergman pilgrimage is FACE TO FACE, his latter psychiatric study of a tormented woman's endeavor to find her true self, and the most extraordinary feat is unbiasedly attributed to Liv Ullmann's tour-de-force commitment to her role, a quintessential once-in-a-lifetime liberation to be elicited on the screen, a touchstone for Liv's legendary career! A 35mm color film, Liv Ullmann plays a psychiatrist, who has just emptied her house and relocated to live with her grandparents while waiting to be transferred abroad with her frequent- on-business husband and her daughter, currently is in a student camp. Then the claustrophobic apartment where her grandparents stay apparently is also the place she spent most of her childhood, and it uncannily resurrects the wraith of a forbidding image haunts her once and now reappears, an indeed hair-raiser out of Bergman's indomitable close-framing.Liv's mental condition keeps going downhill after she experiences an unsuccessful rape attempt, which subsequently evokes her inner sexual dissatisfaction and she confides to her new acquaintance she at first met at a friend's birthday party (a fellow doctor whose initiative towards her is a moot and will turn out to be closeted gay man, played by Josephson, who retreats from Liv's counterpart husband in SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE 1973, 8/10 to a sidelined observer) about her innermost desire. Deeply harassed by the recurring wraith she executes a futile suicide, whereupon she alternatively battles between dream and reality, the illusory dream sequences cast a self-emancipating spell on her but remains elusive to its audiences (her strait- laced childhood, the guilt towards her parents' car accident etc.), finally she seems to convalesce from the incubus and decides to return to work and embrace a brand new day as if nothing has happened, the film abruptly ends, withholding its own POV of what will ensue next. Death and love is an eternal theme for Bergman, and they surround each other, through his stoic camera-work and overlong gazes into Liv's escalating breakdown, under the veneer of a normal life, each human individual has a variety of discrepant mentalities contribute to our own distinctiveness and intricacy, within the art form of cinema, no one can best Bergman in this slant and FACE TO FACE is his fastidious anatomy of a living soul to the utmost bareness, as disquieting and repercussive as ever!

Sindre Kaspersen Swedish screenwriter, playwright, producer and director Ingmar Bergman's 37th feature film which he wrote, premiered in USA and was screened Out of competition at the 29th Cannes International Film Festival in 1976. It was shot on locations in Stockholm, Sweden and is a Swedish production which was produced by Swedish production manager and film producer Lars-Owe Carlberg (1923-1988). It tells the story about Jenny Isaksson, a psychiatrist who moves in with her grandparents in the locality of Bollnäs, Sweden after getting a temporary job as a psychiatrist at a psychiatric clinic. While her husband Erik is at a conference in Chicago and her 14-year-old daughter Anna on a horse camp, Jenny goes to a party held by her colleague Hermuth Wankel's wife Elisabeth. There she meets a doctor named Tomas Jacobi who turns out to be her patient Maria's half-brother. Jenny and Tomas starts seeing one another and becomes friends, but all of the sudden Jenny begins to have nightmares that lead her into a trauma.Distinctly and acutely directed by Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated from the main character's point of view, draws a pervasive and involving portrayal of a woman's relationship with a doctor and her struggle with coming to terms with her childhood and maintaining her sanity while being tormented by unsettling dreams. While notable for it's colorful and interior milieu depictions, stellar production design by Swedish production designer Anne Terselius-Hagegård and film producer Peter Kropénin, cinematography by cinematographer Sven Nykvist, editing by Swedish film editor Siv Lundgren, use of sound, use of colors and the music by Estonian-born Swedish concert pianist Käbi Laretei, this character-driven, narrative-driven, existentialistic and at times severe story about an emotionally scarred mother and wife who goes face to face with herself, depicts a multifaceted study of character.This at times atmospheric, somewhat surreal and in-depth psychological chamber drama from the latter part of Ingmar Bergman's career, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, interrelating stories, substantial character development, the versatile and dedicated acting performance by Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann who gained her second Academy Award nomination for this role, the subtle acting performance by Swedish writer and actor Erland Josephson (1923-2012) and the fine supporting acting performances by Swedish actress Sif Ruud (1916-2011) and Swedish actress Aino Taube (1912-1990). A scrutinizing and afflicting modernist character piece which gained, among other awards, the NYFCC Award for Best Actress Liv Ullmann at the 42nd New York Film Critics Circle Awards in 1977, the NBR Award for Best Actress Liv Ullmann and Best Foreign Film at the 49th National Board of Review Awards in 1977 and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 34th Golden Globe Awards in 1976.

Galina As every one of Ingmar Bergman's films, "Face to Face" (1976) deals with Life, Love and Death. The Bergman's alter ego in the film is "a well-adjusted, capable and disciplined person, a highly qualified professional woman with a career, comfortably married to a gifted colleague and surrounded by what is called "the good things of life." It is this admirable character's shockingly quick breakdown and agonizing rebirth that I have tried to describe. I have also, on the basis of the material at my disposal, shown the causes of the disaster as well as the possibilities available to this woman in the future." (Ingmar Bergman) This seemingly successful woman who would attempt a suicide is played by Liv Ullmann and whatever has been said about her in this film as a psychiatrist who faces and struggles with her own nervous breakdown, still can not describe how she did it. For almost two hours, she is in every scene of the film, "lonely, ashamed", and facing unbearable nightmares of her past, struggling for her sanity. She gave, perhaps, the most powerful and unforgettable performance by any actress on the screen. She literally transforms herself in several different persons - her voice, facial expressions, the manner of speech, emotions - change with such a rapid speed and so effortlessly in front of you - it would take your breath away.I've never been as moved and fascinated by any performance on the screen as by Liv's in the film and I think the second time even more than the first one. Sure, it was a Bergman's film, his ideas, his anxieties; his "toothache" in the heart but it was Liv who lived through them and showed them with such powerful depth, honesty and selflessness that the film will always belong to her. This is one performance never to forget.Both Bergman and Ullmann were nominated for an Oscar (directing and acting) but for unknown and strange reasons, the movie is not available on DVD or even on tape."yes" – to the movie and YES! to Liv Ullmann