I have written before about Bergman here, but this film has eluded me until now. As I have said before I think his early films until ' The Seventh Seal ' are his best. Why ? He concentrates on life in its joy and sadness, and to a large extent avoids the terrors that he draws up from his own subconscious and projects on to us as viewers. ' Face to Face ' falls definitely into this category of madness and the terror of death and what lies on the borderline of death. Here he makes up visions of these borderline entrapments within the mind. His subjectivity here is total and terrible to experience for those viewers who are vulnerable and themselves fragile. The hope offered is minimal. The closed casket in flames, the disgust of an old person's touch, and the fears about never waking up to reality. The other films that I will list for those who are fragile in their minds are ' The Silence ', ' Through a Glass Darkly ', ' Persona ' ( to a lesser extent ) and the horror of watching someone die in torment in ' Cries and Whispers '. And in my opinion this horror of existence began in ' The Seventh Seal ' with the man screaming that he does not want to die, and the girl about to be burnt at the stake. I give it 2 for Liv Ullman for she does give an extraordinary performance, but to save my own mind I reminded myself of ' Smiles of a Summer Night ' and the equally, if not better performance of Eva Dahlbeck showing a sad joy of life not permitted in ' Face To Face '.
Review of Face to Face
