Fanny And Alexander

The Age

Thursday September 25, 2008

Philippa Hawker

Fanny and Alexander

Hopscotch, 183 mins, M,

drama,1983

4/5

Ingmar Bergman's much-loved Fanny and Alexander, which exists as a five-hour-plus television drama but was also released in a shorter theatrical version, is in many ways a Bergman compendium: he has described it as the sum total of his life as a filmmaker, a condensation of themes, images and characters that have compelled him over the years. It is a rich, sensuous, epic work, with a large cast of Bergman regulars, that moves between the world of intensely observed social detail and the dreamlike, sometimes threatening world of the imagination and the supernatural. Its focus is the child's point of view, that of 10-year-old Alexander; the film begins in 1907, with an extended Christmas party sequence at the home of Alexander's grandmother, a wealthy actress. Alexander's life is transformed when his father dies and his mother remarries; the religious severity of his stepfather is an oppressive influence, alongside the energetic, boisterous, sensuous vigour of his theatrical family: a struggle between these two impulses propels much of the film. This DVD is the theatrical release; for those who want to see the extended TV version, it is available on a Region 1 release from the specialist DVD company Criterion.

No DVD extras