Bergman's most underrated...?

Perhaps not (quite) his best, but certainly up there at the top IMHO and that is not only thanks to Bergman's direction (and script) but also to the performances of 'his' four actors - I would like to single out the always amazing Ingrid Thulin here - and five if you include Bergman as the priest in the confessional

8.5/10 on first viewing. Easily

"In the ancient Greece, theater was inextricably tied to religious rituals. The audience arrived long before sunrise. At dawn the masked priests appeared. When the sun rose over the mountains, it illuminated the center of the stage, where a small altar was erected. The blood of a sacrificial animal was collected in a large vessel. One of the priests hid behind the others. He wore a golden mask, like that of a god. When the sun had risen even higher, two priests elevated the vessel at precise moment, so that the audience could see the godly mask reflected in the blood. An orchestra of drums and pan flutes played, and the priests sang. After a few minutes the officiant lowered the vessel and drank the blood."

- Ingmar Bergman in Images


"There's always such a lot of pretentiousness surrounding films. Such a lot of apparatus. Shooting takes forty-five days, fifty days, sixty-five days. For Fellini it takes twenty-eight weeks and there's a hell of a hullaballoo and cost God knows how much. So I thought: Hell, I'll gather four of my close friends and we'll rehearse for four weeks and then we'll shoot it. I figure out I'd be able to shoot it in nine days."

- Ingmar Bergman in Bergman on Bergman


the above from: http://www.ingmarbergman.se/page.asp?guid=A7FA2CC4-A9CB-4A80-BAC7-BDD5 EFC36236


edit: the following from http://www.ingmarbergman.se/page.asp?guid=4FB72ADE-0584-492D-9BE8-8629 DAFA6BD6


"When I ended my tenure as head of the Royal Dramatic Theater, I could barely contain a heavy fury: we had completely revitalize a theater that had been like Sleeping Beauty's castle and had, as the Swedes say: "put the church in the middle of the village", meaning that we had put the chief thing in the chief place. We have organized the house from the top to bottom and had begun to play timely dramas. We offered children's theater on the large stage there and we also rented the China Variety Theater, which was close by, where we put on plays for various schools. We toured. We twenty plays per season. In short, we utilized the resources of the theater to the maximum degree. For this, we (I) kept being reprimanded. My fury had to be channelled - it broke out in The Ritual.

More or less consciously I divided myself into three characters in the film. Sebastian Fisher (Anders Ek) is responsible, lecherous, unpredictable, infantile, emotionally disturbed, and always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he is also creative, deeply anarchistic, epicurean, lazy, amiable, soft, and brutal. Hans Winkelmann (Gunnar Björnstrand), on the other hand, is orderly, strictly disciplined with a deep sense of responsibility, socially aware, good humored, and patient.

The woman, Thea (Ingrid Thulin), is, I believe, a half-conscious attempt to depict my own intuition. She is faceless, doesn't recognize her maturity, submissive, and has a need to please. She has sudden impulses, speaks with God, angles, and demons, believes herself to be a saint. She tries to accomplish stigmatization, is unbearably sensitive - cannot even stand to wear clothes at times. She is a kind of satellite dish for secret signals from extra-terrestial radio stations.

These three characters are inextricable entwined; they cannot get away from each other and cannot function in pairs. Only in the tension between the three points of the triangle can anything be accomplished. It was an ambitious effort to divide myself and depict how I really function, what forces keep my machine going.

Thea has sister characters from other films: Karin in Through a glass darkly goes through the wallpaper and speaks with a spider-god; Agnes in Cries and Whispers gets stuck on the road between life and death; Aman/Manda in The Face has an ever-shifting sexual identity. Thea also has cousins such as Ismael in Fanny and Alexander, who has to be kept in a locked room.

From this trinitarian perspective, the years at the Royal Dramatic Theater were not good ones. Neither Sebastian nor Thea has any room to speak of in which to live and move. The orderly Hans Winkelmann has the floor. The other two fall silent, weaken, and withdraw."

- Ingmar Bergman in Images: My Life in Film

"This film strikes me as Bergman's most underrated, and probably his strangest. My favorite film of his is probably Hour of the Wolf, but this film really deserves more attention."

Yes, yes and yes!

It's his most occult film, for sure, and the one closest to "Eyes Wide Shut".

I thought "The Rite" was fantastic. I wouldn't quite call it one of Bergman's best films, but I would absolutely call it one of his most underrated. It's very reminsicent of "The Magician" in many ways, as well as "Hour of the Wolf" to a lesser extent, and I think all three of these films ("The Magician, "Hour of the Wolf", and "The Rite") are criminally under-appreciated, even by many Bergman fans. I would also add "Face to Face" to that list. One thing they all have in common (except for "The Magician") is that none of them have received Criterion releases. And since, perhaps regrettably, Criterion seems to be the most dominant factor in determining the contemporary popularity of classic arthouse films, it's no surprise. "The Magician" is on Criterion, but simply had the misfortune of being released after "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries", two of Bergman's greatest (although I personally believe "The Magician" is even better than either). "So Close to Life" suffered for the same reason, although, admittedly, it's not quite on par with "The Seventh Seal", "Wild Strawberries", or "The Magician". "The Passion of Anna" also does not have a Criterion release, but for whatever reason (it's brilliant, for one) seems to have achieved popularity in spite of that. "Shame", unfortunately, has not. I think much of Bergman's early work has been left behind as well. The Eclipse set that Criterion released actually contains his weakest work from that period. "Thirst" is an absolutely great film, but otherwise it's not the strongest sample of Bergman's early work. "Torment" is a good film, but it's more Sjöberg's film than Bergman's. "Port of Call" and "To Joy" are good films, but not great, and "Crisis", Bergman's debut, is one of his weakest films. I think "Thirst" is the only film of the five on that Eclipse set that really shows what Bergman was capable of, even that early in his career. He had other films from that part of his career (the late '40s) that were much better than the other four films on that set. "Music in Darkness" was one of Bergman's weakest films, but "It Rains on Our Love", "A Ship Bound for India", and "Prison" are all very strong films, which get little to no attention, even from Bergman lovers. From the next part of his career, Criterion released "Summer Interlude", "Summer With Monika", and "Sawdust and Tinsel", but he had some other great films from that time period that deserve attention as well. "Waiting Women" wasn't especially good, but I think "A Lesson in Love" and "Dreams" are both really high quality films. And I know a lot of people aren't big on "The Devil's Eye", but I thought it was great. Then there's "All These Women", which has been passed over justifiably -- probably his worst film. And later in his career, "The Magic Flute" was wonderful. So Bergman has a great many films that haven't gotten enough love: "It Rains on Our Love", "A Ship Bound for India", "Prison", "Thirst", "A Lesson in Love", "Dreams", "So Close to Life" (a.k.a. "Brink of LIfe"), "The Magician", "The Devil's Eye", "Hour of the Wolf", "Shame", "The Rite", and "Face to Face" are all highly underrated, in my opinion.