The 1976 premiere of
Face to Face
came at the height of director-screenwriter Ingmar Bergman's career. Prestigious awards and critical acclaim had made him into a leading name in European art cinema, yet today
is a largely overlooked and dismissed work.
This book tells the story of its rise and fall. It presents a new portrait of Bergman as a political artist exploring a new medium with huge public impact: television. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen, feminism, and alternative psychotherapy, he made a series of portraits of the modern bourgeois family focusing on the plight of women;
followed in the tracks of
The Lie
(1970) and
Scenes from a Marriage
(1973). By his workbooks, engagement planners, and other archival material, we can trace his investigation into the heart of repressive family structures to eventually glimpse a way out. This volume culminates in an extensive study of the two-year process from the first outlines of the screenplay to the reception and aftermath of
. It thus offers a unique insight into Bergman's world, his ideas and artistry during a turbulent time in cinema history.