The Cinematheque

Actress Ingrid Bergman’s only film for director Ingmar Bergman was this wrenching mother-daughter psychodrama, shot in painterly autumnal colour tones by cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Bergman plays Charlotte, a renowned concert pianist visiting Eva (Liv Ullmann), her adult daughter, for the first time in many years. Eva, dowdy and repressed, is unhappily married to a provincial parson, and now takes cares of her disabled sister Helena (Lena Nyman), whom Charlotte had once locked away in an institution. A lifetime of pent-up rage and resentment is unleashed as daughter and mother go face-to-face in an exchange of recrimination, self-justification, and confession. The emotional ferocity is magnified by Bergman and Nykvist’s masterful use of close-up. Autumn Sonata earned Oscar nominations for Ingrid’s performance and Ingmar’s original screenplay. It also proved to be Ingrid’s last feature film before her death in 1982.