Product Details

• Actors: Anita Björk, Ulf Palme, Märta Dorff, Lissi Alandh, Anders Henrikson
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: Swedish
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: July 1, 2003
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304270798
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #333,900 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The caged finch that figures in Miss Julie's credit sequence sums up August Strindberg's tragic heroine all too well--she may be "jewel of the house", but she's also trapped. In Alf Sjöberg's expressionist adaptation, Anita Björk plays the high-born Julie to Ulf Palme's laborer's son Jean (with her feline features, Björk resembles a fair-haired Vivien Leigh). As much as the controlling aristocrat and social climbing valet detest each other, desire cannot be denied. Other impediments include the times (late-19th century Sweden), the ever-present staff (notably Max von Sydow's lusty groom), and Jean's upright fiancée (Märta Dorff). Unlike the thematically similar Lady Chatterly's Lover, their affair blooms and withers over the course of a single Midsummer's Eve, though Sjöberg's dissolves to dreams and memories lends their brief encounter an epic dimension (Jean has been smitten with Julie since childhood).

Like his protégé Ingmar Bergman, Sjöberg divided his time between stage and screen--the same as his theatrically trained leads. Though they remain fully clothed, suggestions of sado-masochism led American censors to ban the film in 1951. Shot by August's descendant, Göran Strindberg, the Cannes Grand Prize winner bears the otherworldly look of Bergman's The Magician combined with the hothouse atmosphere of Elia Kazan's A Streetcar named Desire. As Peter Cowie notes in the illuminating video essay, Strindberg's stormy marriage to a baroness inspired his masterpiece (not for nothing did he title his autobiography The Son of a Servant). In the booklet, Birgitta Steene puts the playwright's career in further perspective, while Peter Mathews does the honors for the director. The supplements conclude with a short Sjöberg interview from 1966, a moving made-for-TV documentary from 2006 (Miss Julie: 100 Years in the Limelight), and the US theatrical trailer. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description

This haunting tale of emotional repression--winner of Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prize--is the masterwork of director Alf Sjoberg (Torment). A major force in the Swedish film renaissance, Sjoberg translated August Strindberg's acclaimed play int

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An immaculate and definitive screen adaptation, February 21, 2002

By 

Dave Godin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miss Julie [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Some films are so utterly faultless and brilliantly made that one is almost at a loss to find enough superlatives with which to praise them, and yet, at the same time keep it credible. MISS JULIE is one such film, and it seems entirely fitting that one of the greatest Swedish films ever made should be based on the work of one of Sweden's greatest writers. Every single aspect of this film is perfect; the black and white photography, the wonderful musical score by Dag Wiren, the acting from all the cast, but in particular from Anita Bjork who sets a standard in playing Miss Julie that could hardly be bettered. The play which provides the screenplay is of course devastating with the inexorable interplay between class and rank, and human desire and lust overlapping and intertwining, and too, the now almost forgotten concept of "duty" and "honour". If you like movies that make you think, eat away at your heart and memory long after you have seen them, then I cannot recommend MISS JULIE more highly. In the fifty years since it was made, its brilliance has not diminished one jot. A masterpiece and a film to truly treasure. My one regret with the VHS print is that although the sequence is intact, the lettering from the original credit titles has disappeared.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Things we can do for mending a broken heart!, November 6, 2005

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Miss Julie [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Strindberg seemed to anticipate the ontological loneliness, the boredom, the immature frivolity and the no sense of living around a impetuous young who having been rejected by her fiancée decides to flirt and eventually seduce her servant.

If you watch this film with the glasses of the actual society, you will find it something dated, but if you observe from another perspective, you will find interesting clues that may lead you to link the essence of the Existentialism (Think in Albert Camus The foreigner) and three outstanding films released after: Joseph Losey ` s The Servant, Bergman 's The silence and Bertolucci `s Last Tango based on Alberto Moravia.

It's a crime to arouse a passion only to satisfy a caprice.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before the age of glamour, February 9, 2010

By 

Alan Turing "transient" (Fair Lawn, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miss Julie (The Criterion Collection) (DVD)

Even though by using the expression "Age of Glamour" people usually refer to the period between two great European wars, in the cinema world the age of glamour, I think, came around mid 1960's. Surely during the first half of XX century scores of cheap B&W melodrama movies were produced, but after the "new wave cinema" and "kitchen sink realism" have petered out it became more and more difficult to produce anything serious even in the indie niche market, and since late 80's the whole movie industry essentially became more and more children-oriented.

Films like "Fröken Julie" bring us back to the years when the movies were still created "in earnest" and watched not "for fun" or "for kicks" or to get thrilled or because of the "special effects" - but to feel empathy and to understand other human beings. Film is based on August Strindberg's play, which was written, like many of his works, to express his frustration and spite he felt towards women. While this attitude won't find too many open supporters today, it's difficult to deny Strindberg's work its seriousness and expressive power.

The film "Fröken Julie" is definitely a match to the play in every sense. It's very realistic, showing life in Sweden with love and knowledge of detail, but also - with uncompromising frankness. Strindberg play's burning misogyny is fully transferred to the screen. Countess Berta, miss Julie's mother (Lissi Alandh) is shown as a live monstrosity, destroying the life of her husband and making her daughter insecure, manipulative and cruel towards everybody and anybody.

Alf Sjöberg, the director, did not produce a commentary to the play, his approach was - to be true to the Strindberg's letter and spirit. The film was produced in 1951, and its influence on Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" (1957) is beyond doubt.