Shame is one of Ingmar Bergman's greatest films, and a film that is distinctively his work even though it has a few atypical features. After the incomparable Persona, Bergman followed it up with three lesser known masterpieces from 1968-69. The informal trilogy - Hour of the Wolf, Shame, The Passion of Anna - each follow different couples played by Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow whose lives are disrupted by violence. These films also utilised genres or styles that Bergman rarely worked with - horror, war, French New Wave influences. These films are atmospheric and intense, and Shame being a war film set in the future is no exception.

Shame is about war in the most abstract sense. Like Tarkovsky's Sacrifice,…

Having concluded his trilogy on the shame of man before God, Ingmar Bergman turned to the shame that men level at each other from within their own barbed hearts.  

Somehow, it is more unforgiving of a expulsion than one could imagine ever even being conjured by a god. 

It takes a man’s own self-loathing to contain the knowledge of how best to use it in subjugating another. 

“Shame” pairs with Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf” in being a rare genre film from the director. Where “Wolf” was his sole entry in horror, “Shame” belongs to the niche we might today call ‘dystopian science fiction.’ 

Set in an indeterminate future, “Shame” depicts a bickering couple caught up in a war…

In a filmography so profoundly melancholic, Shame might very well be Bergman at his most joyless. We're thrown into a world that has practically no bright spots to begin with & yet, we see the light get repeatedly beaten out of anything that moves. Everybody becomes a completely hopeless victim, at the mercy of a merciless conflict. Liv Ullmann & Max von Sydow give excellent performances showcasing the progressively sudden tensions that arrive by sheer powerlessness. Their personalities & coping mechanisms are almost polar opposites, but they try their best to hold onto that tiny glimmer of hope caused by sharing some commonality. The pain, the trauma, the sorrow.

At the end of it all though, we're left with the moral question of…

Action! - of God and Man: Bergman and the Hopelessness Kind

War serves as the perfect backdrop for Bergman’s exploration of shame, moral decline, and violence, all through the perspective of a marriage that’s slowly falling apart, with the simmering tension serving as the perfect fuel to accelerate the process. In many ways, the events that transpire during the movie serve as a mirror into the internal conflict that these characters are fighting through, both individually and as a marriage.

Von Sydow and Ullman are both fantastic. I especially love how, through their performance, with some help from the writing, they do a great job depicting the gradual decline of their love. The growing animosity that flourishes between the two…

Mais um excelente filme de Bergman. Depois de adquirir uma certa base de conhecimento sobre os assuntos abordados em seus filmes, este, assim como muitos outros, revela-se fascinante. A figura forte da mulher contrastando com o homem fraco, e toda a desgraça que a guerra provoca nos indivíduos, bem como a degradação moral humana, são retratadas com maestria nesse filme.

Cada dia fico mais impressionado com a habilidade de Bergman em desenvolver os dramas humanos corriqueiros em suas obras. O filme se passa em uma ilha isolada, onde o casal de músicos Jan (Max von Sydow) e Eva (Liv Ullmann) vive uma vida tranquila, ou pelo menos é o que aparenta. Eles se retiraram da sociedade em busca de paz…

Criterion Collection Spine #961
(Foreign language film)

A captivating anti-war film that focuses on the lives of innocent people being destroyed, rather than the conflict itself.

"Sometimes everything seems just like a dream. It's not my dream, it's somebody else's. But I have to participate in it. How do you think someone who dreams about us would feel when he wakes up. Feeling ashamed?"

I had my eyes on Ingmar Bergman's Shame for a while, and I am thrilled to say it did not disappoint. The film reminded me a lot of both 'Come and See' and Andrei Tarkovsky's 'The Sacrifice', which are two 80s anti-war films with a similar look and feel. The story follows a couple played by…