Word: offing
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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One can atribute this in part to its superb settings and photography, that deepen its mood of terror and melodrama. Bergman's regular designer, P.A. Lundgren, has placed a surrealistic sequence near the film's end, in a claustrophobic attic stacked with canvasses, sculptures, and decayed bits of ornate furniture...
Gunnar Fischer, whose careful attention to photographic composition and perfect focussing has always been an aspect of Bergman's best work, has outdone himself in this film. Most impressive are the atmospheric shots at the film's outset and the ensuing carriage ride through the misty forest, immediately reminiscent of...
As usual, all of Bergman's actors perform excellently. Max von Sydow, memorable as the Knight in The Seventh Seal, is especially outstanding for his intense portrayal of Vogler, the leader of a group of entertainers who practice Mesmer's "animal magnetism" in nineteenth-century Europe.
The gradual revelation of Vogler's disgust with the world (visually depicted by the carefully-directed progression from impenetrability to utter weariness in his facial expression) occurs while a committee of cynical officials reviews the troupe's act to see whether it is suitable for the towns-folk. The enertainers...
Comedy, as in other recent Bergman films, is deftly handled and usually interwoven with the serious. As Tubal vends his "love potion," the old housekeeper is won over by the manager's hilariously cavalier manner, but her impatience for the potion derives, we learn, from her starvation for physical love...