Something for the culture-vultures. Ingmar Bergman directs, for television, a Swedish opera company in a performance of the Mozart classic -- a radical change of pace for Bergman, who, for years, had banished music from his movies. To set the proper lofty tone for this gala event, Bergman assembles an exemplary audience on screen -- silent, rapt, expectant faces, representing every age, sex, and race. Thereafter, Bergman confines himself almost exclusively to the performance itself, and he comes up with just enough clever touches to qualify this as a minor achievement instead of a major waste. The pretense of an actual on-stage production of the opera is belied by the amount of playing for and to the camera, close-up. Neither a strict film-opera (a film made of an opera) nor a loose opera-film (a film made from an opera), but something in between, or rather, back and forth. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd
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