Product Details

• Actors: Anita Björk, Ulf Palme, Märta Dorff, Lissi Alandh, Anders Henrikson
• Directors: Alf Sjöberg
• Writers: Alf Sjöberg, August Strindberg
• Producers: Rune Waldekranz
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: Swedish
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: July 1, 2003
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304270798
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,780 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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  #49 in	Video > Art House & International > By Original Language > Swedish
  #53 in	Video > Art House & International > European Cinema > Sweden

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 19 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Dave Godin (Sheffield, England) - See all my reviews

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 9 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 (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A classic play brought to the screen, March 8, 2008

By	Ted "Ted" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

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

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film

Miss Julie is based on a well known 1888 play August Strindberg with the original Swedish title of Fröken Julie. The play has been adapted in to a movie over a dozen times.

The film won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It is about a aristocratic young woman living with her father who has broken up with her fiance and begins to be attracted to a servant in their mansion. They fall in love but societal norms prevent a marriage between common people and the upper class.

The special features are excellent as well. There is a television documentary about the play that inspired the film. It includes material about the 1999 US/British film adaptation. There is also a theatrical trailer, an archival interview with Alf Sjöberg, and a video essay by Peter Cowie.

This is a great film and makes me want to see the other versions. This one no doubt is the most well known.