TO JOY *

The title is a bit misleading since there isn't that much joy to be found in Ingmar Bergman's 1950 film "To Joy". It begins with the off-screen death of one of its two leading characters and is then told in flashback. They are violinists in an orchestra who marry but find living together difficult. She's Maj-Britt Nilsson and he's Stig Olsen and the conductor is played by Victor Sjostrom.

The music's great but the material is just another chilly Bergman view of infidelity and an unhappy marriage; watching it you feel as if the director had all of Olsen's character's ambition but had yet to fully realise his talent. Nilsson's beauty and natural warmth shine through and Gunnar Fischer's cinematography is suitably crisp but overall, a minor addition to the Bergman canon.