Autumn Sonata

Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata (1978) brought together, for the only time, the two great Bergmans of cinema: director Ingmar and the legendary star Ingrid, in her final film role. The collaboration earned Ingrid Bergman an Academy Award nomination and produced one of the most piercing of all dramas about mothers and daughters.

Ingrid Bergman plays Charlotte, the famous pianist whose self-absorption has scarred her daughter Eva, played by the director's frequent muse Liv Ullmann. Confined largely to a single house over one night, the film is essentially a duel between two extraordinary actresses, shot in warm, lamplit close-up by Sven Nykvist, as buried grievances surface in waves of accusation, guilt and longing. The famous scene in which Charlotte “corrects” her daughter's playing of a Chopin prelude lays bare a lifetime of wounding in a few minutes.

Searing and intimate, the film distils Bergman's lifelong fascination with emotional cruelty within families into its starkest form, and the casting of two Bergmans gave it the weight of an event. Its influence on the chamber drama of familial reckoning is profound. Harrowing yet humane, Autumn Sonata is essential late Bergman — and a fitting farewell to one of the screen's greatest performers. The unprecedented meeting of the two Bergmans gave the film the aura of an event, and its unflinching study of maternal damage has influenced family dramas ever since.