The Best Intentions

Bille August directed Ingmar Bergman’s autobiographical screenplay about the turbulent relationship between his parents (Samuel Froler, Pernilla August). Akerblom: Max von Sydow. Karin: Ghita Norby. Nordenson: Lennart Hjulstrom. Alma: Mona Malm. Frida: Lena Endre. Bergman: Keve Hjelm., Scripted (but not directed) by Ingmar Bergman, Best Intentions is a multilayered backwards glance at the courtship of Bergman’s own parents. Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler) is a struggling theology student in the year 1909. His intended, Anna Aakerbloom (Pernilla August, who married director Bille August while the film was in progress) is from a well-to-do family. Despite the expected class differences and personality clashes, love-or at least mutual understanding-prevails. But after a harsh, spare few years as the wife of a clergyman, Anna yearns for the more bountiful pleasures of her family home. Bergman writes himself into the proceedings as a mewling infant. The current three-hour theatrical version of Best Intentions (original title: Den Goda Viljan) was simultaneously prepared as a six-hour TV miniseries, which ran in Europe, Scandanavia, and Japan.