The Ingmar Bergman Collection

Ingmar Bergman's career has been up and down--as borne out in this five-film collection (plus a bonus disc of supplemental materials) that ranges from the inscrutable and experimental masterwork Persona to The Serpent's Egg, a curio that offers the odd couple casting of Liv Ullmann and David Carradine. But this is not like buying a James Bond box set and winding up with only the Roger Moore films: The Ingmar Bergman Collection contains, for the most part, provocative, superbly acted, and exquisitely shot films that you don't have to be Woody Allen to appreciate, with the major them running throughout being isolation--both psychological (Persona, Hour of the Wolf) and physical (the remote island settings in The Passion of Anna, Shame). Each disc contains brief, but candid interviews with distinguished members of Bergman's stock company, including Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, and Erland Josephson, as well as illuminating commentary by Bergman biographer Marc Gervais, while the bonus disc features two interviews with the Master, one from 1970, the other circa 2002 (in which the prickly Bergman wrests control of the interview from his interrogator). Persona, Shame (in which a couple try to remain apolitical in the face of civil war), and The Passion of Anna (about an artist--played by Bergman regular Max von Sydow--whose simple life is shattered due to entanglements with a widow and another couple), loom large in the Bergman canon, and--taken together with the substantial boxed set extras--make this collection essential for world cinema collections. Highly recommended. (D. Liebenson)