About

To be honest, it is with delight and curiosity that I think back on my childhood … It was difficult for me to differentiate between what existed in my imagination and what was real.

Fanny and Alexander will screen from an archival 35mm film print. This screening will be of the theatrical cut of the film.

Fanny and Alexander was meant to be the end. Ingmar Bergman had decided to make one final cinematic statement before retiring to a life of theatre, television, and writing. While he would eventually return behind the camera for 2003's Saraband, Fanny and Alexander is the great director's grand declaration – a sweeping, loosely-autobiographical portrait of a family through the eyes of two young siblings set in turn-of-the-century Sweden. The film, which would become the most expensive Swedish film produced at the time, is an opulent production of great vivacity, featuring dozens of individual speaking roles.

Like Scenes from a Marriage 1973, Bergman shot an extended version of the narrative for television, though this theatrical cut was released first. Its grandiloquence is not diminished by its lesser runtime – in particular, Sven Nykvist's luxuriant cinematography (which would win one of the film's four Academy Awards) shines even brighter on the cinema screen.

Fanny and Alexander is an epic of the intimate. It is a monumental summation of a life's work; it combines melancholy and joy, high emotion with warm humour. While it did not end up being Bergman's final film, it may still be his magnum opus.