Autumn Sonata (1978)

Director Ingmar Bergman was 60 years old when this film arrived at the Box Office in 1978, and it also marked the last film role for Ingrid Bergman, then 63. Despite them both being from Sweden and sharing a surname, they were not related and, surprisingly, this was the only film in which he directed and she acted. However, it seems that Ingmar actually wrote this story/film in order to get her to feature alongside Liv Ullmann. And what a treat it turned out to be.

Eva (Liv Ullmann), a quiet, deeply repressed parson's wife living in their isolated Norwegian parsonage, invites her estranged mother, Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman), for a visit. Charlotte is a world-renowned, glamorous concert pianist who has been mostly absent from Eva’s life. They haven't seen each other in seven years.

Charlotte arrives, outwardly radiant but secretly reeling from the recent death of her long-time companion, Leonardo. The reunion starts with a somewhat performed affection on both sides, but Charlotte is immediately thrown off balance when she learns that Eva’s disabled, severely paralysed sister, Helena (Lena Nyman), is living in their home. Eva didn't tell her as she feared, rightly, that Charlotte would not have come if she'd known. Charlotte had previously institutionalised Helena to avoid dealing with her illness. Her reunion with Helena feels equally like a performance, exposing Charlotte's self-absorbed discomfort under her performed warmth.

That evening, tension begins to bubble up as they both settle around the piano. Eva tries to play a Chopin piece for her mother. Charlotte listens, offering polite praise, but then immediately sits down to play the exact same piece, demonstrating her superior technique, criticising Eva's attempt and instructing her on how it should be played with emotional depth. It is a subtle, devastating act of motherly dominance that cuts Eva to the core.

After more pretence between the pair, late-night drinking and sleeping pill-popping, Charlotte wakes up noisily from a nightmare and wanders downstairs, where Eva joins her to see that she is alright. What follows is a brutal, night-long verbal duel where years of buried resentment explode. Eva reveals the deep psychological trauma caused by Charlotte’s selfishness, need for attention, admiration and lack of care for anyone other than herself. She recounts how Charlotte ignored her as a child to pursue her career, then over-controlled her when she was around - forcing her to dress a certain way and cutting her hair against her will. Eva blames her mother's emotional neglect for her own inability to love, the failure of her marriage and even her sister Helena's deteriorating physical condition (which Eva sees as a manifestation of unexpressed rage). Eva also speaks of her own profound grief over the drowning death of her young son, Erik, a loss Charlotte barely acknowledged. A cornered Charlotte breaks down. She confesses her own deep-seated terror of intimacy, admitting she was afraid of her children and how she felt utterly inadequate as a mother. She explains that music was the only place she felt safe and begs Eva to forgive her and love her. The confrontation offers no solution, however. The scars are deep.

Helena is left traumatised by the shouting match, writhing on the floor calling for her mother, which is ignored. By morning, Charlotte is shaken and flees the house, taking a train back to her glamorous life, removed from reality. Eva reflectively walks to her deceased son’s grave, holding onto hope that the night's events have not closed the door completely to future reconciliation. Eva holds onto hope, but it's clear that Charlotte remains unable to change.

Much like, for example, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) in which Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton go hammer and tongs at each other, Marriage Story (2019) with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson - and Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1974) - also featuring Liv Ullmann alongside Erland Josephson, the emphasis here is on raw, human emotion and how well the two actresses can perform. Bergman shoots it in a way that brings out the absolute best from the pair. And he, and they, do it chillingly well. It's an acting masterclass from the two women in a stripped-down, intense, claustrophobic eye-opener.

Cinematographer Sven Nykvist suffocates the actresses' faces, turning their skin, eyes and expressions into a reflection of the focus of the film and the characters' relationship - past and present. Smart use of lighting and shadows makes the house feel more like an interrogation suite than a welcoming home. It really is a delight to watch the two go at it. Liv Ullmann is clearly incredibly talented and Bergman matches her at every turn. It's not an easy watch, but a rewarding one.

My thoughts drifted to Woody Allen at this point as I saw so many ways in which, being an Allen film fan, he has clearly idolised Ingmar Bergman's filmmaking style, storytelling and character-building. A few examples that come to mind include Interiors (1978), which was released the same year as Autumn Sonata and is basically Allen making his own Bergman film (complete with heavy family trauma, muted colour palettes and intense room-bound drama). Films like Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Another Woman (1988) copy Bergman’s pacing, dream sequences, and themes. And to top it all off, Play It Again, Sam (1972) totally highlights Allen's obsession with Casablanca (1942), bringing us full-circle back to Ingrid, the star of that, with Ingmar behind the camera.

Furthermore, Woody Allen also made up Mia Farrow to look just like Liv Ullmann’s Eva in Autumn Sonata - that severe, mousy look across a couple of key films in the 1980s. September (1987) was the direct Autumn Sonata clone where Mia Farrow plays Lane, styled almost identically to Eva - large, round wire-rimmed glasses, plain oversized clothes and her hair pulled tightly back. The plot is also, essentially, Allen’s American re-imagining of Autumn Sonata. Farrow plays a fragile, deeply depressed woman recovering in a secluded country house who gets visited by her glamorous, narcissistic, larger-than-life mother (played by Elaine Stritch), leading to an explosive, late-night confrontation over childhood neglect and emotional trauma. In Zelig (1983), the round glasses and strict, pinned-back hair featured again in stark black-and-white in the shape of Dr Eudora Fletcher - Mia Farrow again in wire-rimmed round glasses, a severe centre-parting and tightly bound hair. And in the aforementioned Interiors (1978) - while Mia Farrow wasn't in this one (she hadn't started working with Allen yet), Mary Beth Hurt played Joey, a tortured, plain-looking daughter dealing with an overbearing mother. She was styled with a similarly muted, rigid aesthetic - severe hair and drab clothing - to evoke Bergman’s dramas such as Cries and Whispers (1972) and Autumn Sonata.

Once you start watching Bergman’s 1970s work back-to-back, you realise Woody Allen essentially built half his career on rewriting the aforementioned Scenes from a Marriage with neurotic New York quips! Scenes from a Marriage is a virtual blueprint for modern "relationship" cinema and Allen, by his own admission, pillaged it endlessly. Husbands and Wives (1992) is basically Allen's American adaptation of that. Bergman starts Scenes from a Marriage with Johan and Marianne having dinner with another couple (Peter and Katarina) whose marriage is exploding in public - forcing Johan and Marianne to confront their own hidden cracks. Allen starts Husbands and Wives with Woody and Mia Farrow having dinner with Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis, who announce their divorce on the spot.

Bergman shot Scenes from a Marriage originally for Swedish TV on 16mm film, using relentless close-ups and an intimate, direct style. In Husbands and Wives Allen copied this aesthetic wholesale, using jagged jump-cuts and handheld cameras to make it feel uncomfortably raw. In Scenes from a Marriage, Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann) discover a strange, tragic paradox - they actually communicate better, understand each other more deeply and have better physical chemistry after they divorce and start cheating on their new partners with each other. Yes, Husbands and Wives is Scenes from a Marriage all over.

There's more! Allen recycles this same bittersweet irony in Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) - the idea that formal commitments ruin the bond between two intellectuals, who only find warmth once the pressure of marriage is removed. In the opening episode of Scenes from a Marriage, the couple is interviewed for a women's magazine, sitting side-by-side putting on a pristine front for the camera while subtly undercutting each other. Allen stole this interview format outright for Annie Hall, Husbands and Wives and To Rome with Love (2012).

Anyway, I'm meandering off into other territory here, related as it may be - perhaps a project for another day! I'll leave you with my thoughts of admiration for Autumn Sonata and recommend very much that you track it down for all of the above, but mostly the powerful performances of the two leads. We'll leave Woody Allen’s massive debt to Ingmar Bergman for another day!