"Actor: Gertrud Fridh"

• Wild Strawberries | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in 1957, Wild Strawberries finds the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman at the height of his powers. It's a road movie, in effect: an aged medical professor (Victor Sjöström)--lonely, disillusioned and haunted by dreams of death--travels across country to receive an honorary degree. But as with all good road movies, the outer journey parallels an inner one. Incidents along the road conjure up memories, and Professor Borg finds himself forced to confront the failures and lost opportunities of his life. Gentle and elegiac, Bergman's film is a masterpiece of compassion and reconciliation, and also a tribute to his predecessor Sjöström, the greatest Swedish director of the silent era. The 78-year-old film maker gives an austere, moving performance, and Bergman treats his lined features like a landscape of yearning and regret. Sjöström is ably supported by other members of Bergman's regular repertory company of the period, particularly Bibi Andersson, heartbreakingly appealing, as the lost love of Borg's youth. --Philip Kemp

• The Magician | DVD | (24/09/2001) from £7.99   |  Saving you £14.00 (233.72%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A sort of existential horror movie set in what often feels like a darkly imaginary 1846, The Magician is Ingmar Bergman's meditation on the restrictive nature of modern rationalism. Max Von Sydow cuts a suitably melancholy and mystical figure as Dr Vogler, the mute hypnotist who travels with a group of players to Stockholm, only to be examined and humiliated by a team of sceptical inquisitors led by Gunnar Bjornstrand's Dr Vergerus and a hog-like police chief. Dr Vogler exacts his revenge on Vergerus, however, in an extraordinary feat of illusion.With its elaborate, occasionally expressionistic sets and its feel of a scrupulously re-enacted nightmare, The Magician is reminiscent at times of Poe or even The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. However, the "below stairs" characters--including Ake Fridell's ebullient Master of Ceremonies and a host of giggling wenches--add comic energy to what is otherwise a startling and sombre reflection of the nature of art and life. It would prove a turning point in Bergman's career as he moved away from his early, "romantic" period.On the DVD: Presented in the original academy ratio, the mix of soft light and harsh shade for which credit should go to photographer Gunnar Fischer, is well-restored here. In notes from his memoirs included here, Bergman relates how his adventures and privations as part of a theatre company in Malmo provided inspiration for The Magician, while critic Ronald Bergman's notes talk of "the ability of the artist to find truth in both fact and fantasy". --David Stubbs

• All These Women | DVD | (26/07/2004) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Pretentious music critic Cornelius is writing a biography on a famous cellist. In order to execute the very best research Cornelius goes to stay in his house for a few days prompting all sorts of comedic consequences... A change of pace for Bergman this black farce (his first feature in colour) is his distinctive way of taking a pot shot at critics a film that proves Berman can be enchanting and amusing without losing his familiar melancholic air.

• Hour Of The Wolf | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (62.50%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Haunted by demons past and present artist Johan Borg fights a losing battle to retain his sanity and maintain his artistic prowess. His wife Alma desperate to help him finds herself starting to share his hallucinations. But as Johan's mind continues to unravel Alma is forced to choose bewteen her love and her life...