The Fifth Act

Award-winning film director Ingmar Bergman's scripts are among the most important documents in film history. Though his vision in such films as Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal has shaped our thinking about the cinema, the vast majority of his most powerful recent work only slowly finds its way to American theaters. The Fifth Act brings to English readers for the first time some of the finest creations of Bergman's mature years. In these scenarios of extraordinary frankness, even rawness, Bergman shows his tender yet realistic views on the world of theater, cinema, and acting, culminating with In the Presence of a Clown, where he returns to the character of his Uncle Carl, an irrepressible inventor who comes up with an early version of the talking film. These most recent scripts, in effect Bergman's own fifth act, add an important and moving chapter to his life work. A preface contextualizing the scripts within Bergman's oeuvre has been added by Lasse Bergstrom, a noted Swedish film critic as well as the publisher of Bergman's work in Sweden. Born in 1918, Ingmar Bergman is considered to be one of the great creators of the modern cinema and he is responsible for more than forty films. Bergman has been nominated for nine Oscars, and has won numerous other awards. The remarkable, final filmscripts of acclaimed director Ingmar Bergman, available in English for the first time.