Passion of Anna

Told elegiacally, Ingmar Bergman's PASSION OF ANNA could easily be seen as a minor work, for it doesn't have anything new to say, but I see it as a perfected version of earlier ideas. In the film, Andreas (Max Von Sydow) is a reclusive loner who works and thinks. He meets two women, Anna (Liv Ullmann) and Eva (Bibi Andersson). He sleeps with Eva, who, by doing this, proves herself to be a deceptive woman, for right afterwords, Andreas goes to be photographed by her husband Ellis. He is warned of Anna, who he is beginning a lax relationship with, but thinks little of it. Anna, however, is a widow. Her husband and son were killed in a car crash, she claims. Andreas takes a masculine role in her life, and their relationship from acquaintances to lovers highly resembles Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Also at play though is the idea of deception, and people who are pretending to be one thing when they are another, and even the idea that those people surrounding them know that they are being deceptive but let it go. PASSION OF ANNA is clean and colorful, one of Bergman's first films in color. It's dreamy and a little off-putting, but ultimately rewarding in its collage of assembled ideas. The end is a marvel.
Passion of Anna: ★★★1/2