Autumn Sonata

Actress Liv Ullmann will join us for a discussion following the screening, moderated by WGBH Executive Arts Editor Jared Bowen.

Autumn Sonata was the only collaboration between cinema’s two great Bergmans: Ingmar and Ingrid, the monumental star of Casablanca. The grande dame, playing an icy concert pianist, is matched beat for beat in ferocity by the fimmaker’s recurring lead Liv Ullmann, as her eldest daughter. Over the course of a day and a long, painful night that the two spend together after an extended separation, they finally confront the bitter discord of their relationship. This cathartic pas de deux, evocatively shot in burnished harvest colors, ranks among the director’s major dramatic works.

About Liv Ullmann

Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann has been featured in eleven of Ingmar Bergman’s films, including Persona, Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage and Shame. She has received many international awards, including four Golden Globes, three National Society of Film Critics awards, three New York Film Critics Circle awards, and two Academy Award® nominations for Best Actress. 

In the 1990s, Ullmann turned to directing, and has gone on to helm the feature films Sofie (1992), Kristin Lavransdatter (1995), Faithless (In Competition, Cannes Film Festival 2000), and Miss Julie (2014, starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell). Ullmann has also directed numerous critically acclaimed stage plays all over the world, including the sell-out production of A Streetcar Named Desire (starring Cate Blanchett) in New York and Sydney, and Uncle Vanya at the National Theatre in Oslo. 

Beyond her film and stage work, Ullmann considers her highest priority to be her avocation for human rights and the empowerment of underprivileged people around the globe. For over 35 years, she has been Vice President International of IRC (International Rescue Committee), the largest non-governmental refugee organization in the world. Twenty years ago, she founded the Women’s Refugee Commission, whose primary mission is dealing with women’s issues in refugee or displaced circumstances.

About the Ingmar Bergman Centennial

This fall, theaters across the greater Boston area will celebrate the 100th birthday of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman with a collaborative retrospective of his work. Together the Brattle Theatre, Coolidge Corner Theatre, and Harvard Film Archive will be hosting over 30 screenings of the filmmaker’s work.

No name is more synonymous with the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema than Ingmar Bergman, a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. In a career that spanned six decades, Bergman directed dozens of films in an astonishing array of tones, ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family relationships.