bo Widerberg

In late 19th century Sweden, a beautiful teenage circus performer falls in love with a married aristocratic army officer, and they run away together. Count Sparre (Widerberg regular Thommy Berggren) abandons family and career for true love and delirious passion with young Elvira (Pia Degermark, named best actress at Cannes for her performance), but the enormous social pressures arrayed against the pair lead ultimately to tragic consequences. The couple's rejection of stifling Victorian strictures for a romp-in-the-grass idyll in nature, the emphasis on individual happiness over the oppressive forces of conformity, had great resonance in the Summer-of-Love 60s. Rendered with ravishing colour, sun-dappled light, soft focus, and the occasional schmaltzy (and much-parodied) slo-mo sequence, set to the strains of Mozart's Piano Concert No. 21 (2nd movement), Elvira Madigan has been called a "candidate for the prettiest pic ever award" (Time Out). Some critics have compared the painterly cinematography to the art of Renoir and Bonnard. "Elvira Madigan is a tranquil film, an elegiac film, its textural grace tinctured with Scandinavian premonitions of death" (Peter Cowie).

Bo Widerberg Collection - 6-DVD Set (Joe Hill (1971), Fimpen / The Butt (1974), Victoria (1979), En handelsresandes dod / Death of a Salesman (1979), Lust och fagring stor / All Things Fair (1995), Liv till varje pris / Life at Any Cost (1998)).

A policeman who is a patient at a hospital in Stockholm is brutally murdered, stabbed repeatedly with a bayonet. The investigation that follows is led by Martin Beck and Einar Rönn. It turns out that the murdered man had sadistic tendencies and was known among his colleagues for abusing his police privileges and brutalizing civilians. Although his colleagues had been aware of his behaviour, the police force's esprit de corps had suppressed complaints about him and prevented any reprisals…

A policeman who is a patient at a hospital in Stockholm is brutally murdered, stabbed repeatedly with a bayonet. The investigation that follows is led by Martin Beck and Einar Rönn. It turns out that the murdered man had sadistic tendencies and was known among his colleagues for abusing his police privileges and brutalizing civilians. Although his colleagues had been aware of his behaviour, the police force's esprit de corps had suppressed complaints about him and prevented any reprisals…

This symbolic tale finds a young girl an expectant single parent. She keep the baby but dumps the father, a kindly but immature youth bent on becoming a rock & roll crooner. When she takes up with a more serious boy, he drags her down with his own emotional impairments.