Rent Shame (1968)

War Comes Quietly, Then All at Once - Shame review by griggs

About ten minutes in, my brain stopped trying to “follow the plot” and just held on tight. This is Bergman doing suspense like a vice: sudden violence, shifting rules, and that constant sense the ground under you is about to move again. It’s weirdly action-packed for him, and it stays gripping because the nightmare keeps evolving instead of camping in one miserable room.

Max von Sydow is extraordinary, starting as a nervous, twitchy artist and hardening into something darker — not with a big switch, but with tiny compromises that add up. Liv Ullmann is magnificent in his orbit, and her second-half change is even quieter: less panic, more ice. It’s subtle, and it lands.

The capture-and-interrogation stretch is genuinely upsetting because it’s so matter-of-fact. And the images linger: a couple reduced to “survive or die” in a conflict too vast to understand, where loyalties slide around until even you don’t trust your own instincts.

Bergmans take upon war - Shame review by CP Customer

I read a review by Roger Ebert which commented on the fact this was released very soon after the Vietnam war started, so we already have a lot of reasoning for the things that happen in the film like they do. It's a very different Bergman film, but that's just the beauty of it , Van Sydow and Ullman are both outstanding in their roles, playing two innocent civilians who want nothing to do with war, what side they're on etc. but still get dragged into it and the horrors that surround it. The events that then unfold take into account basic human survival, it's a very bleak Bergman film but it's very powerful and should be seen if you are a fan of his, it won the best foreign film oscar back then and deservedly so, it is a very good take on war and Bergman deserves full credit for this fine effort, which sits nicely alongside many of his classic consistent films.