Fanny and Alexander

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Fanny and Alexander

The great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, still prolific as a writer and TV director at age 86, retired from movie directing in 1982 after the release of his three-hour family saga "Fanny and Alexander," which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Seen today, the film -- which topped a 40-year career in the movies -- remains one of his most impressive achievements. Tonight, the Brattle Theatre screens a restored version of "Fanny" to kick off a 10-film retrospective, "Cries and Whispers: The Cinema of Ingmar Bergman," featuring new 35mm prints of five other works by Bergman, who ranks with Ozu, Dreyer, Welles, and Tarkovsky as one of the 20th century's greatest filmmakers.

Although Bergman's name was virtually synonymous with European art-house cinema in the 1950s, when landmark films such as "Wild Strawberries," "The Magician," and "The Seventh Seal" (all in the series) debuted on US shores, he has fallen out of fashion in recent years, perhaps because of his unrelentingly plaintive and pessimistic view of life. Some have mocked Bergman's anguished inquiries into love and relationships, death and the existence of God, but they endure because of his austerely beautiful imagery and passionate pursuit of emotional truth. Growing up the son of a stern Lutheran pastor certainly imparted some of his Scandinavian severity, but Bergman, who began his directing career in the theater, also embraced the despairing poetic vision of Swedish playwright August Strindberg, as well as cheerless dramatists like Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill.

"Fanny and Alexander" (originally a five-hour TV drama) is a fitting introduction to the very personal cinema of this master craftsman, not only because it exhibits Bergman's signature themes and stylistic devices, but also because it is one of his most life-affirming films. Seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy, "Fanny and Alexander" opens on Christmas Eve, 1907, and tells the epic story of the Ekdahls, a boisterous, tight-knit, well-to-do family of actors. Yet Bergman concerns himself mostly with the conflict between young Alexander (baby-faced Bertil Guve) and the unbendingly cruel Bishop (Jan Malmsjo) who marries his widowed mother, Emilie (Ewa Froling).

From the lavish, dizzying Christmas-party sequence that opens the film to the cold palace of religious severity where Alex and his sister Fanny are eventually imprisoned, Bergman carefully balances fantasy and reality, grand pageantry with an almost oppressive intimacy revealed in characteristically tight close-ups. Paying homage to Strindberg and Fellini, "Fanny" revels in the powers of human imagination and magical intervention, championing hope against despair even while Bergman shakes his fist at worldly evil and the maddening silence of God.

An obsessive perfectionist, Bergman took great care in cultivating a group of regular players, including Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, and Max Von Sydow. He also developed close relationships with two cameramen, Gunnar Bjornstrand and the incomparable Sven Nykvist, who shot 20 of Bergman's films, including the haunting 1966 psychodrama "Persona," in which the identities of a mute actress and her nurse begin to meld, and another major work about the interior lives of women, "Cries and Whispers," from 1972.

Many of Bergman's films have just been released on DVD, and sometime next year will bring the theatrical release of another acclaimed TV drama, "Saraband," heralding a long overdue revival of interest in his work. And there's no better way to catch this brilliant, tormented, soul-searching film artist than on the big screen.