The pleasures afforded by films of the sixties are many and various, not least the quality of the black & white photography when it was the cinema's default setting; and if a film had been made in colour it was the result of a conscious decision on the part of the makers.
In this context an eminent director's first film in colour was a major event; the catch being that it was a novelty that it could only take place the once. Within months of each other in 1964 the first colour films emerged from both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, the former taking a (very) temporary break from austere drama. Easily Bergman's worst film - castigated by Peter Cowie for its "embarrassing witlessness" - it just wasn't funny (Bergman himself later dismissing it as "a putrid film", while Billy Wilder had made much better use of 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' for comic effect a couple of years earlier in 'One, Two, Three'), swiftly outstays its welcome and it took nearly twenty more years before 'Fanny and Alexander' finally showed that Bergman's capacity for warmth and humour had merely been dormant, not extinct.
But Sven Nykvist's Eastman Color photography and P. A. Ludgren's sets (which look as good to eat as icing sugar) ensure that visually you certainly get your money's worth, while the women are gorgeous, Allan Edwall amusing in a a supporting role, and it offers the not inconsiderable pleasure of seeing a major talent totally crash and burn.
In this context an eminent director's first film in colour was a major event; the catch being that it was a novelty that it could only take place the once. Within months of each other in 1964 the first colour films emerged from both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, the former taking a (very) temporary break from austere drama. Easily Bergman's worst film - castigated by Peter Cowie for its "embarrassing witlessness" - it just wasn't funny (Bergman himself later dismissing it as "a putrid film", while Billy Wilder had made much better use of 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' for comic effect a couple of years earlier in 'One, Two, Three'), swiftly outstays its welcome and it took nearly twenty more years before 'Fanny and Alexander' finally showed that Bergman's capacity for warmth and humour had merely been dormant, not extinct.
But Sven Nykvist's Eastman Color photography and P. A. Ludgren's sets (which look as good to eat as icing sugar) ensure that visually you certainly get your money's worth, while the women are gorgeous, Allan Edwall amusing in a a supporting role, and it offers the not inconsiderable pleasure of seeing a major talent totally crash and burn.