FACE TO FACE: ACT FOUR: THE RETURN {ANSIKTE MOT ANSIKTE: FJARDE AKTEN: ATERKOMSTEN} {SWEDISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES} (TV)
Summary
Continued from T:38910. Part four of four in this dramatic miniseries written and directed by Ingmar Bergman for Swedish television. "Face to Face" chronicles the nervous breakdown of Dr. Jenny Isaksson, a hospital psychiatrist whose cultivated professional faade comes crashing down around her when she is forced to deal with her unresolved childhood demons. In this episode, Jenny awakens in the hospital and sobs to Tomas about the horrible acts committed every day against children throughout the world. He responds that she is paying for her indifference with an utterly abstract anguish and says that adults are children too. He confides in her his own difficulty in finding joy in life and reveals that he too recently tried to kill himself. Later, Jenny has another dream vision: she sees herself lying in a casket. The Jenny in the casket awakens as the lid is closed upon her and nailed shut while she screams for her mother and father. Smiling, the other Jenny sets the coffin on fire. Awake again in the hospital, Jenny tells Tomas of her overwhelming childhood fear of death, compounded by the deaths, during her childhood, of those close to her and how she pretended her fear didn't exist. She then reveals her sexual and emotional frigidity. Jenny says she became someone that people counted on -- but someone who was ultimately not real. She tells him about her complex relationship with her parents and explodes in a litany of childhood rules on proper behavior, cleanliness, and morality enforced by her grandmother. In her final purge of the past, she faces the terror of being locked in the closet by her grandmother when she misbehaved as a child. Later, Tomas arranges to have Jenny released. He tells her he will be leaving for a vacation in Jamaica from which he may not return and they bid each other goodbye. Anna comes to visit Jenny at the hospital, and Anna is at first quiet and unresponsive when Jenny tells her about the suicide attempt. Later Anna's anger surfaces and she says she knows Jenny never liked her and leaves abruptly. Jenny is discharged from the hospital and returns to her grandparents' apartment where she finally comes to grips with the spectral old woman and her aging grandparents and gains new understanding about love and death. (This program is in Swedish with English subtitles.)
(Sophiahemmet -- the Swedish Royal Hospital -- where this episode was filmed is the same hospital where Bergman convalesced following his own collapse.)
Details
- NETWORK: Sveriges Television 2 (Sweden)
- DATE: May 19, 1976
- RUNNING TIME: 0:39:43
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:38911
- GENRE: Drama
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama; Dreams; International Collection - Sweden; Neurasthenia; Psychiatry; Suicidal behavior
- SERIES RUN: Sveriges Television 2 (Sweden) - TV, 1976
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Ingmar Bergman … Director, Writer
- Nykvist, Sven (See also: Nyquist, Sven) … Production (Misc.), Photography
- Lars-Owe Carlberg … Production (Misc.), Administation, Production Manager
- Peder Langenskiold … Direction (Misc.), Assistant Director
- Liv Ullmann … Cast, Dr. Jenny Isaksson
- Erland Josephson … Cast, Dr. Tomas Jacobi
- Aino Taube … Cast, Grandma
- Gunnar Bjornstrand … Cast, Grandpa
- Sven Lindberg … Cast, Erik Isaksson
- Tore Segelcke … Cast, the Woman Specter
- Helene Friberg … Cast, Anna
- Kristina Adolphson … Cast, the Nurse