Customer Reviews

After the Rehearsal [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw this a couple of years ago at the Film Forum in New York City. It touches on the thoughts of an older theatre director, his interactions with some of the actors in his production, and on acting itself. It is a typical Bergman film - deep thought about life and people. After The Rehearsal is an excellent film, and definitely worth watching multiple times. It is a tragedy that this isn't more widely available in the US with a good translation (a Criterion DVD would certainly suffice...).

"After the rehearsal" was the following project after Fanny and Alexander, and once more the master filmmaker employs his emotional memories, and his long experience as theater director to carve in relief a portentous dramatis personae behind stage.

An old but perfectionist director is besieged by two women. One of them, the unforgettable Ingrid Thulin, who desperately wishes he returns with her, through the multiple afflictions and hard conditions. She was a promising actress who feels is in frank deterioration, her5 fears for getting older and an inextinguishable necessity of being accompanied to face her inner demons. On the other side of the coin, a very young actress in vertiginous rise, who really loves him despite his age, and faces him trying to set up him through a very smart dialogues concealed by the mask of the rationality and several discipline of the rules of the profession, in a sort of kaleidoscopic range of emotions, duties, ambitions, dreams and hopes. Both of them decide to open and even theirs souls to unexpected levels.

Only the talent of a sacred director like him could make this powerful first-class gem drama in just 72 min. Towering performances of Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Lena Olin.

This film is waiting for its release on DVD format.

When I saw the film, I was just stunned. What a great film! Full of deepness, thinking cinema. A great background plot, in a basic escenary, with just three actors, and just one place. I recomend this movie to any Bergman fan, and maybe not just them, also to any film lover.