Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.
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As in The Night of the Hunter, a realistic psychological drama is allowed to expand into fantasy; the result is one of Bergman's most haunting and suggestive films.
As for Bergman's signature broodiness, we see here his lightest touch since 1955's sex farce Smiles of a Summer Night.
From struggling with mortality toward the end of one's life in Wild Strawberries to the haunting and overbearing view of religion in Fanny and Alexander , no single film has truly captured Bergman's beef with God better than the seminal The Seventh Seal.
Bergman has given us problematic religious men before, notably the faithless priest in the gorgeous, painful Winter Light (1963), but this bishop blows them all away.
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In the abbreviated theater version of 188 minutes, the one I reviewed, Ingmar Bergman ("Autumn Sonata"/"Wild Strawberries"/"Cries and Whispers") shoots for the autobiographical as he lets go of hurtful personal experiences that have plagued him for his entire life (the film's parson is a reminder of his own Calvinistic clergy father).
Hinging on a similar character defect in the past, 1957 Wild Strawberries/Smultron-Stället nevertheless ends with its elderly mans affirmation of life, love, youth, faith and the future not often associated with the gruff, pessimistic, God- and death-obsessed screenwriter/film and stage director and not to be fully repeated until autobiographical Fanny and Alexander revived his career twenty-six years later.
As with the wedding in The Godfather, Bergman uses the Christmas party to introduce us to his characters and to establish their relationships with one another -- especially with their guard down.