# The Passion of Anna
**The Passion of Anna** (Swedish: *En passion*) is a 1969 Swedish drama film written and directed by [Ingmar Bergman](https://www.edgepedia.org/ingmar-bergman), in which a divorced loner living on an isolated island begins an ill-fated relationship with a widow who has lost her husband and son.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) • [2](https://www.criterion.com/films/28873-the-passion-of-anna) It stars [Max von Sydow](https://www.edgepedia.org/max-von-sydow) as Andreas Winkelman and [Liv Ullmann](https://www.edgepedia.org/liv-ullmann) as Anna Fromm, with Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson as the married couple Eva and Elis Vergérus.[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/28873-the-passion-of-anna) The film is Bergman's first drama in color and the third in a loose trilogy with *Hour of the Wolf* (1968) and *Shame* (1968).[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) • [3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *En passion*; shown as *A Passion* in Europe, retitled *The Passion of Anna* for American distribution[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) • [3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna) |
| Premiere | 10 November 1969 at the Spegeln cinema, Stockholm; 101 minutes, Eastman Color, 1.66:1[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) |
| Filming | Fårö island, 26 September to 8 December 1968, a 74-day shoot Bergman described as one of the worst he had experienced[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) |
| Color | Bergman's first drama in color and, by his account, the first true color film he made with cinematographer Sven Nykvist[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) |
| Signature device | Four documentary-style interview takes in which the lead actors, questioned by Bergman himself, comment on their characters[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) |
| Trilogy | Third of three Fårö films with *Hour of the Wolf* and *Shame*, the only Bergman films starring both von Sydow and Ullmann, each using Bach's Partita No. 3[3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna) |
| Reception | Screened out of competition at Cannes 1970; National Film Critics Award for Best Director; special prize at Valladolid and a screenwriting award[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna) |
## Spoilers
### Story and characters
Andreas Winkelman, recently divorced and withdrawn, lives alone on a remote Swedish island; the film opens with him repairing the roof of his cottage, the same cottage in which Eva and Jan live in *[Shame](https://www.edgepedia.org/shame-1968-film)*.[3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna) He has a brief liaison with his neighbor Eva ([Bibi Andersson](https://www.edgepedia.org/bibi-andersson)) and then begins an affair with Anna Fromm (Liv Ullmann), a widow grieving the loss of her husband and son.[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/28873-the-passion-of-anna) Anna insists that her marriage was truthful and honest, but a letter Andreas finds in her abandoned purse warns of "physical and psychical acts of violence", and conversations with the proudly cynical Elis and the unsteady Eva expose contradictions in her account.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) • [5](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-passion-of-anna)
Two subplots run through the drama: an unseen killer is slaughtering animals on the island, and television broadcasts carry images of the [Vietnam War](https://www.edgepedia.org/vietnam-war).[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna) • [6](https://www.iffmh.de/festival/unser-filmprogramm/filme/the-passion-of-anna/index_ger.html) The locals hound an innocent man to his death in the belief that he is the torturer of animals.[7](https://www.cinephilia.com.au/show_movie.php?movieid=4589) Bergman wrote in *Images: My Life in Film* that the film's philosophy holds that an irrational, causeless, cosmic evil exists, and that humans are the only animals to possess it; nothing frightens people more than incomprehensible, unexplainable evil.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna)
## The interview device
The film's most discussed formal feature is a set of four special takes, one per lead actor, in which each appears as themselves and comments on their character's mental state while Bergman, off screen, asks the questions.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) The Bergman Foundation's account suggests the style was probably borrowed from [Jean-Luc Godard](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-luc-godard)'s *La Chinoise*.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) In the first such take Bergman asks von Sydow for his personal view of Andreas Winkelman, and the actor answers that the character's unhappy marriage and legal worries have driven him into a hiding place that has become a prison, and that the difficulty is "to try and express a lack of expression".[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna)
The device grew out of improvisation on set. Liv Ullmann recalled at a 1973 [American Film Institute](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-film-institute) seminar that Bergman, normally strict about keeping to his sentences, gave the four actors complete freedom in the dinner-party scene, filming them answering questions in character, and later brought them to the studio to speak as actors about the characters.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna) According to one retrospective review, the Andersson and Ullmann interviews were improvised while those of von Sydow and Josephson were scripted.[7](https://www.cinephilia.com.au/show_movie.php?movieid=4589) Critics have read the insertions as blurring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, lies and truth, and dreams and reality.[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/28873-the-passion-of-anna)
## Place in Bergman's work
According to [Sight and Sound](https://www.edgepedia.org/sight-and-sound), the three films Bergman made consecutively across 1968–69, *Hour of the Wolf*, *Shame*, and *The Passion of Anna*, may be regarded as a loose trilogy: Fårö serves as the setting for each, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann head the cast of every one as its leading couple (these being the sole Bergman films featuring both performers), and each incorporates Bach's Partita No. 3.[3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna) All three are concerned with the precariousness of home, testing the central relationship until it is destroyed as an emotional home.[3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna) [Criterion](https://www.edgepedia.org/criterion) describes the film as a sequel of sorts to *Shame*.[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/28873-the-passion-of-anna) A scholarly analysis of Anna's dream sequence argues that its images are taken from *Shame* and reads the dream as a reverse journey of that film.[8](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ARAB/en/article/view/74096)
The film also marked a technical turning point. Bergman's only previous color film was *All These Women* (1964); he and Nykvist now wanted to make "a film in color as it had never been done before", aiming for a black-and-white film in color with certain hues emphasized in a strictly defined scale.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) Nykvist later explained that they wanted the palette to reflect the story's mood, so they chose a location with very little color, simplified the colors in front of the camera, used very little make-up to avoid warm skin tones, and drained color in the laboratory.[9](https://fleetfilms.blogspot.com/2010/07/sven-nykvist-interview-from.html) The slow color negative demanded lighting methods different from those they knew, the results confused them, and the two argued often; Bergman's intestinal ulcer flared and Nykvist suffered vertigo during the shoot.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna)
## Production troubles
Bergman wrote that the screenplay was composed "in a white heat" as a series of moods rather than a traditional dramatic sequence, and that he chose, partly from lack of time and partly to challenge himself, to solve technical problems during filming rather than in the writing stage.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) The 45-day schedule was hard on the cast as well: von Sydow was performing at the [Royal Dramatic Theatre](https://www.edgepedia.org/royal-dramatic-theatre) in Stockholm two weekends in parallel and had to commute by boat in the late fall.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna)
The year 1968 also reached the crew. Nykvist's assistant photographer, previously the most diligent member of the team, became an agitator who called Bergman and Nykvist dictators and demanded that artistic decisions be made by the whole crew. Bergman offered anyone who objected their salary and a ticket home; nobody left, the agitator was reassigned, and filming continued without further protest meetings.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) In the final stages even editing proved difficult, and over eleven thousand feet of film were left on the cutting room floor.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna)
## Release and reception
Svensk Filmindustri and Cinematograph AB produced the film, which premiered on 10 November 1969 at the Spegeln cinema in Stockholm.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) It opened in the United States in May 1970, where Bergman won the National Film Critics Award for Best Director.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna) United Artists handled international distribution, and the Swedish newspaper *Expressen* objected that its marketing recycled clichés about Sweden.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna) The film was screened outside competition at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, where French critics received it very positively, and in April 1970 Bergman received a special prize from the catholic jury at the International Film Weeks in [Valladolid](https://www.edgepedia.org/valladolid), Spain, along with an award for screenwriting.[1](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna)
Later critical assessment has been favorable. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer score from 17 reviews and an 84% audience score.[10](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_passion_of_anna) Penelope Gilliatt of *The New Yorker* called it "a masterpiece" and "one of the most specifically modern films I have ever seen, yet there is barely a modern object in sight".[10](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_passion_of_anna) Sight and Sound counts it among the Bergman films that have fallen through the cracks, critically neglected relative to the works around it.[3](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna) On IMDb it carries a weighted user rating of 7.6/10 from about 11,000 votes.[11](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064793/ratings/)
## References
1. [The Passion of Anna, Ingmar Bergman Foundation](https://www.ingmarbergman.se/en/production/passion-anna)
2. [The Passion of Anna (1969), The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/28873-the-passion-of-anna)
3. [Endings: The Passion of Anna, Sight and Sound (BFI), 26 April 2022](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/endings-passion-anna)
4. [The Passion of Anna, Turner Classic Movies article by Lorraine LoBianco](https://www.tcm.com/articles/235826/the-passion-of-anna)
5. [The Passion of Anna, The New Yorker, Michael Sragow, 2018](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-passion-of-anna)
6. [The Passion of Anna, International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg program](https://www.iffmh.de/festival/unser-filmprogramm/filme/the-passion-of-anna/index_ger.html)
7. [The Passion of Anna review, Cinephilia, Bernard Hemingway](https://www.cinephilia.com.au/show_movie.php?movieid=4589)
8. [The Dream in Ingmar Bergman's The Passion of Anna (1969) As a Reverse Journey of His Film Shame (1968), Área Abierta](https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ARAB/en/article/view/74096)
9. [Sven Nykvist interview from Cinematography Screencraft by Peter Ettedgui](https://fleetfilms.blogspot.com/2010/07/sven-nykvist-interview-from.html)
10. [The Passion of Anna, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_passion_of_anna)
11. [The Passion of Anna (1969), IMDb ratings](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064793/ratings/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1960s › Released 1966 to 1969*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license