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IMDbPro

Fanny and Alexander

Original title: Fanny och Alexander
  • 19821982
  • RR
  • 3h 8m
IMDb RATING
8.1/10
63K
YOUR RATING
Pernilla Allwin and Bertil Guve in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
  • Drama
Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.
IMDb RATING
8.1/10
63K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Ingmar Bergman
  • Writer
    • Ingmar Bergman
  • Stars
    • Bertil Guve
    • Pernilla Allwin
    • Kristina Adolphson
Top credits
  • Director
    • Ingmar Bergman
  • Writer
    • Ingmar Bergman
  • Stars
    • Bertil Guve
    • Pernilla Allwin
    • Kristina Adolphson
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 158User reviews
    • 103Critic reviews
    • 100Metascore
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Won 4 Oscars
      • 25 wins & 12 nominations total

    Photos113

    Ewa Fröling and Jan Malmsjö in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Bertil Guve in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Allan Edwall and Ewa Fröling in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Ewa Fröling and Jan Malmsjö in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Pernilla Allwin and Bertil Guve in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Pernilla Allwin, Ewa Fröling, and Bertil Guve in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Pernilla Allwin, Ewa Fröling, and Bertil Guve in Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Fanny and Alexander (1982)
    Fanny and Alexander (1982)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Bertil Guve
    Bertil Guve
    • Alexander Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Alexander Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Pernilla Allwin
    Pernilla Allwin
    • Fanny Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Fanny Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Kristina Adolphson
    Kristina Adolphson
    • Siri - Ekdahlska husetas Siri - Ekdahlska huset
    Börje Ahlstedt
    Börje Ahlstedt
    • Carl Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Carl Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Kristian Almgren
    Kristian Almgren
    • Putte Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Putte Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Carl Billquist
    Carl Billquist
    • Police Superintendent Jespersson - Ekdahlska husetas Police Superintendent Jespersson - Ekdahlska huset
    Axel Düberg
    Axel Düberg
    • Witness to Bishop's Death - Ekdahlska husetas Witness to Bishop's Death - Ekdahlska huset
    Allan Edwall
    Allan Edwall
    • Oscar Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Oscar Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Siv Ericks
    Siv Ericks
    • Alida - Ekdahlska husetas Alida - Ekdahlska huset
    Ewa Fröling
    Ewa Fröling
    • Emilie Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Emilie Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Patricia Gélin
    • Statue - Ekdahlska husetas Statue - Ekdahlska huset
    • (as Patricia Gelin)
    Majlis Granlund
    • Miss Vega - Ekdahlska husetas Miss Vega - Ekdahlska huset
    Maria Granlund
    • Petra Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Petra Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    Eva von Hanno
    • Berta - Ekdahlska husetas Berta - Ekdahlska huset
    Sonya Hedenbratt
    Sonya Hedenbratt
    • Aunt Emma - Ekdahlska husetas Aunt Emma - Ekdahlska huset
    Olle Hilding
    • Old Clergyman - Ekdahlska husetas Old Clergyman - Ekdahlska huset
    Svea Holst
    • Miss Ester - Ekdahlska husetas Miss Ester - Ekdahlska huset
    Jarl Kulle
    Jarl Kulle
    • Gustav Adolf Ekdahl - Ekdahlska husetas Gustav Adolf Ekdahl - Ekdahlska huset
    • Director
      • Ingmar Bergman
    • Writer
      • Ingmar Bergman
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      At the time, the largest film ever made in Sweden (with 60 speaking parts and over 1200 extras) and the most expensive, with a budget of $6 million.
    • Goofs
      Among the Christmas decorations in the Ekdahl house, there is a garland of miniature flags of the Nordic countries, including the Finnish flag. The Finnish flag was in fact only designed and adopted after Finnish independence in 1917, a decade after the events of the film.
    • Quotes

      Ekdahlska huset - Helena Ekdahl: Are you sad because you've grown old?

      Jacobis hus - Isak Jacobi: I'm certainly not. Everything's getting worse. Worse people, worse machines, worse wars... and worse weather. I'm glad I'll soon be dead.

    • Alternate versions
      Theatrical version is 188 minutes long. Director's cut is 312 minutes long.
    • Connections
      Edited into Fanny and Alexander (1983)
    • Soundtracks
      Suite No 2 for Cello Solo
      Written by Benjamin Britten

      Performed by Frans Helmerson

    User reviews158

    Review
    Top review
    Life-affirming Bergman.
    Perhaps the most impressive feature of this wonderful film is the humility with which its creator presents it to the world, as if it were no grander than the old-fashioned Nativity-play shown in the early scenes at the Theatre.

    At the end of this experience - to term it with any mere technical tag, like 'movie', would be inadequate - Bergman's profoundly grown-up disillusionment has transformed into the pure spirituality of abnegation and acceptance. His intellectual pilgrimage, through possibly the greatest career in films, finds the director arriving back where he began, with the great simplicities of life. But there is a difference with his return, which is that his prodigality over the years has burnt the rage out of him, and finally allowed him to 'enjoy what may be enjoyed' (as one of the Ekdahls says), without further fretting over the puzzle of human existence. From all this human folly (he clearly feels) comes the only wisdom, which is - simply - to be human.

    It is, indeed, a film like no other for allowing the pieces of experience to settle into their appointed places. There is a beautiful quality of selfless resignation, in this last of his works for cinema, which finally and forever excels the sadistic disciplines of The Bishop.

    This perverted creature confesses, to the new wife whom he has lost, how it is impossible to 'tear off the mask' as it is 'burned into my face': He is become an authoritarian '... a rite, a law, a custom - not a man'. [Shelley] Having put the notional love of God before that of humankind, there is nowhere for his personality to be re-enacted in the bosom of any kindly recollections that will survive him. Except in that of Alexander/Bergman, where his two, each-in-their-own-way terrifying, fathers, both the White and the Black opposites of an imagination flickering with the director's haunted vision, will project forever onto his Cinematic arena of stark absolutes the inner strife where each of us is locked away, struggling to endure the turmoil of these eternally irreconcilable truths.

    The White Knight and The Black Bishop: These are phantom moves in our great game with Death, and pieces that will be returned into play for as long as humanity continues. How like Chess Life is: Just a game we play, with arbitrary rules, and yet whose progress is of supreme and abiding concern to each and every one of us.

    This great work is a monument to play, in all its senses, not least the play of light and the play of ideas, both equally insubstantial and yet the essence of reality, eloquent as the silence of a great, roofless Cathedral. Out of the Ruin of Faith, Bergman has wrought a Peace that passeth understanding. And it is in this ultimate by-passing of the relentless structures of intellect that Bergman finally achieves the resolution of his productive neuroses, in a truly magical film whose every phase is as inevitable as breathing, or the changeable and unimpeded weather.

    As the grandmother reflects. at last, 'I don't want to put Life together anymore. I just leave it broken. Strangely, it seems better that way.'

    Death, in the end, is not a calamity, but the choice of all who have truly known Life. In other words, to choose Life is to accept its Dark partner, Death. And to accept each as part of the family group, even though they seem complete misfits there.

    The old lady, with Strindberg's Dream-play in her lap, knows at last that the whole history of her family is only a personal reverie. And yet how much more real it seems than her son Carl's immature and somewhat absurd, angst-ridden railings against 'cruel Fate'!

    Had he only accepted his patient wife's gently sympathetic injunction to 'Never mind' the Professor would have been both wiser and happier, enduring with patient fortitude the oceanic inconsequentialities of life's real Mystery, and attending far less to the trivial pseudo-mysteries of his solipsistic men's club. All his morbid rationalising is precisely as much use in real life as the usual state of alcoholic befuddlement which is the only serious pursuit of this club.

    Reason as befuddlement; The sleep of reason as deliverance. With saint-like humility, Bergman gives us back our ordinary human life, as he surrenders his exceptional life in films. But he knows that the ghost of this life will always be with us. His anguished worldliness will haunt us - as the Ghost of Hamlet's father must haunt Alexander - forever.
    helpful•32
    25
    • philipdavies
    • May 8, 2003

    FAQ4

    • Was the Bishop responsible for how his previous family died?
    • What happens during Uncle Isak's visit to the Bishop's House and how?
    • Exactly what happens in Uncle Isak's house?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 17, 1982 (Sweden)
    • Countries of origin
      • Sweden
      • France
      • West Germany
    • Languages
      • Swedish
      • German
      • Yiddish
      • English
      • French
    • Also known as
      • Fanny & Alexander
    • Filming locations
      • Uppsala, Uppsala län, Sweden
    • Production companies
      • Cinematograph AB
      • Svenska Filminstitutet (SFI)
      • Gaumont
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $6,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $6,783,304
    • Gross worldwide
      • $6,795,771
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      3 hours 8 minutes
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.66 : 1

    Related news

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