One of my favorite films from Ingmar Bergman. Theatre actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) suddenly realizes she cannot speak anymore, her ability to communicate verbally has disappeared. After three months in hospital, nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) takes care of her by going together to a summer house on the beach. During this time, we learn a lot from nurse Alma, about her past life and sins, while Elisabet just sits and listens. Soon enough, Elisabet's silence gets into Alma's nerves. She gets furious and cannot control herself. She starts losing the grip of things when Elisabet's husband comes to the summer house and thinks Alma is his wife. A confussion and overlapping of the roles of the two women are the central theme in this classic surreal movie.
The idea for this movie came while Bergman was at the hospital for 14 days. When the nurse applied an injection to sedate him, he was truck by the feeling of non existence; being there and not feeling anything at all, not caring about others, simply being away from everyday life (Elisabet's sudden inability to speak). Bergman's cinema is characterized by a lot of human face close-ups and well-lit black & white scenes. Adding to all this are the disturbing scenes at the beginning of the film. This all adds up to a very original tale of modernist despair.
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