Brink of Life

This movie is fairly straight forward, with women in various situations facing childbirth.

What transforms this movie is the astonishing performances that Bergman is able to obtain from the actors. It's something that is so frequent in the first half of his career. There's something vibrant and remarkable, that transcends plot. You can see why he became so famous. Very few directors seem to be able to obtain such spontaneous performances from their actors.

Like so many of his early films, there's not much here that you might not see in the theatre. Yet it has such remarkable life to it.