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Summary: " A man by gentle love inspired, will have a heart that's.."
Review: "kind and good. To listen to his heart's desires, how sweet the lot of womanhood." Absolutely everything about this video is beautiful. Music of the Master, directed by the Master with beautiful players throughout, can one come any closer to Perfection than this? This is it! IMHO
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Summary: Bergman's Patented Rejuvenation Formula
Review: About Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman's 1974 film-version of Mozart's fairy-tale opera "The Magic Flute" ("Trollflöjten" in Swedish), I am probably unable to be objective. I saw it when it came out, when I was in my second year as a student of Germanic and Scandinavian languages at UCLA. The girl I took to see it on the night that it opened at the Avco cinemas on Westwood Boulevard was baffled by it. She made it perfectly clear that she had no interest in dating me again. But my mother liked it when I insisted that she accompany me to see it, and so did my sister. Two years ago, when my son turned four, I ordered the VHS edition and introduced the lad to it; he responded immediately, was deeply impressed by the antics of Håken Hågegård's Papageno, and has been humming the tunes ever since. Recently I showed it to the students in my "Critical Philosophical Problems" class at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. The Criterion DVD of Bergman's production is the best home-version yet. What is it that makes this the most endearing cinematic or video representation of Mozart's opera? Bergman filmed in the baroque Drottningsholmtheater in Stockholm. He exploits the wonderful charm of eighteenth century stagecraft and fosters the illusion that we are indeed witnessing a repertory traversal of "The Magic Flute" in a public venue. During the Overture, for example, we see the many faces in the audience, including a little girl (said to be Bergman's daughter) whose changing expression becomes the touchstone for onlooker-response during the two acts. On the other hand, we are aware that we are not really viewing some haphazard filming of a performance in the style of PBS at the Met. For the most part, Bergman takes us inside the action so that we forget the presence of stage and audience. So many details call out for notation. Notice how, by emphasizing a nod or a dirty look, Bergman conveys that the Three Ladies are not merely a girlish trio but resentment-driven servants of a resentment-driven Queen of the Night. Remark the gradual alteration of the Queen's appearance. Hågegård's bird-catcher surpasses any other know to me (and Bergman as director contributes mightily to the result). Ulrik Cold's Sarastro becomes a real and complicated person rather than the cardboard wiseman and lawgiver that he usually is. Swedish is as singable a language as Italian, with many feminine endings, so that the poetry strikes the ear as just as beautiful as the music. The English subtitles are easy to follow and unobtrusive. One would have to be made of stone or wood not to laugh and cry by turns during the two hours and twenty minutes of this extraordinary film. Buy it for your children, especially if they are young. The dragon alone justifies the price of admission.
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Summary: Fun, Sex, Madness
Review: Although the costums lack the flamboyance I wolud have liked to see, this opera has an excellent camera & actor performance(several times I forgot this was opera and not a movie). Besides it's crazy. Sarastro's suit makes him look like Dr. Zeus, the three women servants are lesbian, I couldn't stop laughing when Papageno first meets Papagena (I can't believe this opera is in Swedish...I could understand everything, sometimes without looking at the subtitles) you can see the Queen of the Night smoking a cigarrette,...what else can one say it's Bergman all the way
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Summary: a magnificent adaptation
Review: As the film opens with the overture, it focuses on the face of a beautiful child in the audience, and it is as if we see this fantastic production through her innocent eyes; it's an adaptation that captures all the playfulness and enchantment of Mozart's glorious last opera, and brings it to life with renewed vigor.
The attractive cast, though occasionally vocally uneven, is a total delight; Josef Kostlinger is superb as Tamino, Hakan Hagegard shines as Papageno, Ulrik Cold impressive as Sarastro, and Elisabeth Erikson is adorable as Papagena. The sets, which sometimes seem to shift like smoke, as well as the costumes, are masterful, and include everything from lovable fuzzy creatures, to a brilliant vision of the "dark regions", with dancers writhing and wrestling as its tortured inhabitants.
I also enjoyed the backstage views during intermission; Tamino and Pamina playing chess, Sarastro looking over a score of Parsifal while a chorus member reads Kalle Ankas (a Donald Duck comic book), and especially the formerly fire-spewing dragon trudging past a doorway. I never fully appreciated "The Magic Flute" until I watched this film; it's strange that Ingmar Bergman, more known for his somber films, should bring out so much light and joy from this magnificent opera.
It would make a perfect introduction for young people to opera, and the singing in Swedish seems quite natural and enjoyable (especially for us older folks who have listened to the great Jussi Bjorling for decades), and the subtitles are excellent and easily to read.
Those who like filmed opera, will surely find this to be an imaginative, wonderful production. Total running time is 135 minutes.
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Summary: Linguistic Puzzle
Review: As the son of Swedes who retained little of what he heard his mother and grandmother say I was interested to read that the arias in this film are sung in several Scandinavian languages, including Swedish (Papageno), Norwegian (Queen of the Night?) and Danish (the King). Personally, my Swedish is not up to making such distinctions. The film is a delight, one that, as mentioned above, is especially good for children as well.
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Summary: A master interprets a masterpiece
Review: Bergman and Mozart, how could you go wrong? Everything about this opera is perfect. The characters are engaging. The songs are the best Mozart ever wrote. The way the play is staged is true to the spirit that Mozart would have seen in his own day. Pick it up!!
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Summary: Like no other opera film. Bergman is a creative genius.
Review: Bergman is just crazy enough to produce the most unique of Mozart's operas, but he's also got his head on straight, and he pulls off quite a movie. Let me reiterate that: this is a movie. You can make up all the intelligent sounding names you wish, but this is first and foremost a movie, and though each detail is carefully crafted around the music, the actual "listening experience" comes second. Considering how other opera flicks tend to fail miserably, this is a wonderfully inventive approach -- I wish Bergman had directed all of the Mozart repertory! Every aspect, from costumes to casting, is appropriate, and Bergman even plays around a little with the "play within a play" method (and succeeds surprisingly well). It's different from any film, especially any opera film, I've ever seen, and I'm almost positive your high expectations for the big numbers will be met. If you can get past the tedious close-ups of the little girl's face during the Overture (it's not exactly a flaw, just an annoying experiment of Bergman's), then you'll have a true Flute experience. And what better compliment could I possibly give?
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Summary: A brilliant collaboration
Review: Bergman is the one director great enough to have carried this off! The singing ranges from fresh to glorious, the singers are young and beautiful and look like they're enjoying themselves tremendously, and being able to sing (and act) in their own language adds much more than it subtracts. This is a brilliant performance, harmonious, respectful, but thoroughly alive, a real collaboration between the greatest of all composers and the greatest of all cinematographers!
(Special note to those with kids: No need to wait for opera to dawn on them someday in their twenties. The Bergman "Magic Flute" is accessible and wonderfully appealing. My kids, then 5 and 6, loved it from the first. Skeptical? Try it and see!)
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Summary: A dissenting opinion
Review: Bergman's production pales in comparison to recent stage productions in both community theater and on the larger stages in Philadelphia. There is entirely too much standing around. Bergman appears to have employed good singers who view acting as an annoyance. The shots of the audience are in bad taste and detract from the continuity of the story.
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Summary: Amazing!
Review: but not for purists.
If one knows the German text, hearing the Swedish is a little disconcerting. Swedish and German are closely related, but they are not the same.
What the story means has been debated endlessly. My take is that Tamino represents the human soul in search of enlightenment; Pamina represents the spirit of enlightenment. Sarastro represents the Freemasons, while the Queen of the Night represents the Roman Catholic Church. Note, the Queen is the mother of Pamina, but when the former becomes more interested in power than wisdom, Pamina is taken from her and placed unter the wardship of Sarastro. Yet the Queen retains enough majesty that Tamino is easily overawed by her. The then turns into the bloodthirsty harridan of the second aria (think the Inquisition), and finally falls into darkness at the end (think the French Revolution and other secularizing movements). Papageno and Papagena represent an ordinary, earthly (and earthy) love--which Mozart presents as a good thing, just as valuable in its own way as the high romance between Pamina and Tamino.
Another theme in the story is not judging by appearances and looking beyond them. At first we are lead to think that the Queen is a wronged woman, a mother deprived of her child, and that Sarastro is a bloodthirsty tyrant. Later we learn that things are quite the reverse--Sarastro is a wise and benevolent ruler, while the Queen is the wicked despot. Pamina at one point falsely thinks at that Tamino no longer loves her; later she learns that he had a reason for his odd behavior, but her jumping to conclusions nearly cost her her life.
Choices and consequences is another theme; the Queen and Monosantos chose the path they would tread, and look where it lead them. Similarly, Tamino and Pamina choose to face the ordeals of Fire & Water together, and that choice too has consequences.
Now, there are some quibbles with the presentation, both musically and dramatically, but no performance is up to the ideal one hears in one's head when one reads the script or studies the score. Other reviewers have wondered about:
1. The holding up the placards. Those are points in which Mozart is holding up a Moral Lesson. The placards are the equivalent of the tag at the end of Aesop's fables, "The moral of the story is. . . ." It is a bit artificial, and both Mozart and Bergman knows this; Mozart shows us in that the singers at this point step 'out of character' a little, and Bergman's equivalent is the placards.
2. The shots of the audience. All sorts of people--men, women, old, young, etc., but finally settling on the little girl, who probably has never been to an opera before. We are supposed to try to see the performance as she would. She seems a little impassive--but she's Scandinavian, after all; her facial reactions are subtle, but they are there.
This would be a great addition to any DVD collection.
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