Ingmar Bergman

To Joy

To Joy

Taking its title from Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” adapted by Beethoven for his Ninth Symphony, this tragic romance opens with a violinist, Stig (Stig Olin), learning of the sudden death of his wife, Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson). During a prolonged flashback, Stig remembers the delights and tribulations of their relationship, back to their early days in the orchestra conducted by the eminent Sönderby (Victor Sjöström), a time when Stig was riddled with self-doubt. An undeniably personal work for Ingmar Bergman, To Joy is a compelling tale of a young man’s struggle with the demons standing in the way of his happiness.

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Film Info

  • Sweden
  • 1950
  • 99 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Swedish

Available In

Collector's Set

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Blu-ray Box Set

30 Discs

$239.96

Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 1: Early Bergman

Eclipse 1: Early Bergman

DVD Box Set

5 Discs

$55.96

To Joy
Cast
Stig Olin
Stig Eriksson
Maj-Britt Nilsson
Marta Olsson
Birger Malmsten
Marcel
John Ekman
Mikael Bro
Margit Carlquist
Nelly Bro
Victor Sjöström
Sonderby
Credits
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Producer
Allan Ekelund
Screenplay
Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography
Gunnar Fischer
Editing
Oscar Rosander
Set designer
Nils Svenwall

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Ingmar Bergman

Writer, Director

Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

The Swedish auteur began his artistic career in the theater but eventually navigated toward film—"the great adventure," as he called it—initially as a screenwriter and then as a director. Simply put, in the fifties and sixties, the name Ingmar Bergman was synonymous with European art cinema. Yet his incredible run of successes in that era—including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, haunting black-and-white elegies on the nature of God and death—merely paved the way for a long and continuously dazzling career that would take him from the daring “Silence of God” trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) to the existential terrors of Cries and Whispers to the family epic Fanny and Alexander, with which he “retired” from the cinema. Bergman died in July 2007, leaving behind one of the richest bodies of work in the history of cinema.

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