Eva Dahlbeck

While at a summerhouse, awaiting their husbands’ return, a group of sisters-in-law recount stories from their respective marriages. Rakel (Anita Björk) tells of receiving a visit from a former lover (Jarl Kulle); Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) of agreeing to marry a painter (Birger Malmsten) only after having his child; and Karin (Eva Dahlbeck) of being stuck with her husband (Gunnar Björnstrand) in an elevator, where they talk intimately for the first time in years. Making dexterous use of flashbacks, the engaging Waiting Women is a veritable seedbed of Bergman themes, ranging from aspiring young love to the fear of loneliness, with the finale a masterpiece of chamber comedy.Read More »

Hagbard and Signe / The Red Mantle

By Roger Ebert / October 30, 1968
Prentoulis films presents an ASA Film Movie Art Europe co-production, directed by Gabriel Axel from a screenplay by himself and dialog by Frank Jaeger. Produced by Bent Christensen and Johan Bonnier. Photographer in color by Henning Bendtsen.

“Hagbard and Signe” is a beautiful, lean, spare film, which reaches back into the legends of the past to find its strength. I think it must be reckoned the sleeper of the year; I had not heard of it previously, either under the present title or as “The Red Mantle” (its title as the Danish entry at Cannes).Read More »

Quote:
Conceived as an amusing diversion in the wake of Ingmar Bergman’s despairing trilogy, this comedy is the director’s first film in color, and it is an opulent visual feast. Working from a bawdy screenplay he cowrote with actor Erland Josephson, about a supercilious critic drawn into the dizzying orbit of a famous cellist, Bergman brings together buoyant comic turns by a number of his frequent collaborators, including Jarl Kulle, Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Bibi Andersson. All These Women, in which Bergman pokes fun at the pretensions of drawing-room art, possesses a distinctly playful atmosphere and carefree cadences.Read More »