Product Details

• Actors: Harriet Andersson, Benkt-Åke Benktsson, Renée Björling, Gunnar Björnstrand, Eva Dahlbeck
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: Swedish
• Subtitles: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: June 13, 2000
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0780018648
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,364 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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  #56 in	Video > Art House & International > By Original Language > Swedish
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This masterful early Bergman (Autumn Sonata, Cries and Whispers) film is the second installment in a "shrewdly ironic, lewdly hilarious trilogy" (Time). Along with A Lesson in Love and Smiles of a Summer Night, Dream

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Bergman Comedy, February 16, 2003

By A Customer

Along with Smiles On a Summer Night and A Lesson in Love, this is one of a series of sex comedies Bergman made in the late fifties, just before hammering out The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. It is probably the weakest of the trilogy, but like most of Bergman's sex comedies, it is a vibrant, witty, and at points somber examination of the strange boundry between the sexes. Dreams, in particular, explores the theme of age and love.

Eva Dahlbeck plays an aging model who runs a modeling agency. She is locked in a frustrating affair with a married man in Gothenburg, who refuses to see her again. Driven by an obsessive infatuation, she decides to take her next photo shoot to Gothenburg. Harriet Anderson, the young model working for Eva, breaks with her boyfriend over the trip and goes. In Gothenburg, Eva reconnects with her lover and Harriet is wooed by an elderly aristocrat (Gunnar Bjornstrand -- the best performance in the film).

There are brilliant scenes in this film that remind us of its quickly maturing author. An early, dream-like sequence with Eva on a train is a disturbing portrait of the painful obsession of love. The train's straight, forboding tracks are echoed later in a similar sequence with Harriet Anderson on a roller coaster. The most extraordinary piece of this film is a Strindbergesque sequence in which Gunnar, whose wife has gone mad, is confronted by his daughter. The taut and well-written exchanges are watched by a perplexed Anderson through a crack in the door. This scene rates among the best in any of Bergman's films.

The characters are very well-composed. As usual, Bergman has a unique strength in writing about women. The film's weak point is its split plot, which doesn't really reach a satisfying coherence. Bergman later claimed the split plot was "interesting" in the way it worked together, and that the film was crushed only because of the heavy air of depression on the set (he and Anderson had just ended their relationship). You can judge for yourself what the shortcoming is.

Bergman fans will not be disappointed -- particularly those who enjoy the original and surprising flavor of his sex comedies.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An early Bergman stab at the relationship between two women., September 5, 2001

By	darragh o'donoghue (dublin, ireland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Two women - proprietor of a fashion agency and her top model - two stories. the middle-aged Eva Dahlbeck stalks and reunites with a former lover, now married with children; the filming of this section is very intense, claustrophobic, theatrical, as three characters come to terms with their lives and the lies that prop them up.

The youthful Harriet Andersson has a paralell experience, but hers is much more cinematic - including a Big Dipper point-of-view sequence anticipating 'The 400 Blows' - as she is approached by an elderly Consul. This story is almost Gothic or fairy tale - the couple first meet through ghostly window reflections; the consul, with pointy beard, refers to wizards and vampires; he, like Cinderella's godmother, dresses her in riches; he lives in a secluded town mansion with a 'Rebecca'-like portrait of his wife, stricken mad, convinced she gave birth to a wolf. This supernatural plot is countered by bathetic realism, such as the Consul getting sick at the funfair - not very Mephistophelian.

These separate strands cohere in Bergman's vision of women's place in Swedish society - interior, emotionally dependent, identity mediated and fragmented by men. Bergman balances oppressive melodrama with brief glimpses of freedom - this is one of his most appealing early works.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER, February 8, 2000

By	Alex Udvary (chicago, il United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I'm a very big Bergman fan! And enjoy most of his films to a great degree,but somehow this film doesn't amount to what it could have been. The story is typical Bergman. Infact it was taylor made for Bergman's style! At first renting this I thought it would turn out to be Bergman's best! The story is about two women: Susanne(Eva Dahlbeck)and Doris(Harriet Anderson). Dahlbeck is a photographer and Anderson a model. They plan to visit Gothenburg. There they meet two men. Anderson meets a older gentleman played wonderfully by Gunnar Bjornstrand( You'll remember him in the "Winter Light") and the other has been having an affair with a married man! When these's two encounters break through, all each of them have is their DREAMS of love. With a story like this you'd think Bergman really had something here. But the movie moves at such a slow pace. It's even BORING after a while. You find only isolated moments that add up to sheer greatness. The script lacks a certain passion that was most desperately needed in this film, given the story line. Bergman unfortunately really striked out with this one.