Miss Julie - Criterion Collection |  | Actors: Anita Bjork, Palme, Von Sydow
Studio: Criterion Collection
Category: DVD
New (24) Used (15) Collectible (1) from $15.49
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 76709
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Restored, Subtitled
Languages: Swedish (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: CC1666DDVD
UPC: 715515027427
EAN: 0715515027427
ASIN: B000XPSC0W
Theatrical Release Date: 1950
Release Date: January 22, 2008
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| Features:
| • | Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjoberg's visually innovative, Cannes Grand Prix-winning adaptation of August Strindberg's renowned 1888 play brings to scalding life the excoriating words of the stage's preeminent surveyor of all things rotten in the state of male-female relations. Miss Julie vividly depicts the battle of the sexes andes that ensues when a wealthy businessman's daughter (Ani |
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Product Description
Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjoberg's visually innovative Cannes Grand Prix-winning adaptation of August Strindberg's renowned 1888 play brings to scalding life the excoriating words of the stage's preeminent surveyor of all things rotten in the state of male-female relations. Miss Julie vividly depicts the battle of the sexes and classes that ensues when a wealthy businessman's daughter (Anita Bjork in a fiercely emotional performance) falls for her father's bitter servant. Celebrated for its unique cinematic style (and censored upon its first release in the United States for its adult content) Sjoberg's film was an important turning point in Scandinavian cinema.System Requirements:LENGTH: 90 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/BIOGRAPHY Rating: NR UPC: 715515027427 Manufacturer No: CC1666DDVD
Amazon.com
The caged finch that figures in Miss Julie's credit sequence sums up August Strindberg's tragic heroine all too well--she may be "jewel of the house", but she's also trapped. In Alf Sjöberg's expressionist adaptation, Anita Björk plays the high-born Julie to Ulf Palme's laborer's son Jean (with her feline features, Björk resembles a fair-haired Vivien Leigh). As much as the controlling aristocrat and social climbing valet detest each other, desire cannot be denied. Other impediments include the times (late-19th century Sweden), the ever-present staff (notably Max von Sydow's lusty groom), and Jean's upright fiancée (Märta Dorff). Unlike the thematically similar Lady Chatterly's Lover, their affair blooms and withers over the course of a single Midsummer's Eve, though Sjöberg's dissolves to dreams and memories lends their brief encounter an epic dimension (Jean has been smitten with Julie since childhood). Like his protégé Ingmar Bergman, Sjöberg divided his time between stage and screen--the same as his theatrically trained leads. Though they remain fully clothed, suggestions of sado-masochism led American censors to ban the film in 1951. Shot by August's descendant, Göran Strindberg, the Cannes Grand Prize winner bears the otherworldly look of Bergman's The Magician combined with the hothouse atmosphere of Elia Kazan's A Streetcar named Desire. As Peter Cowie notes in the illuminating video essay, Strindberg's stormy marriage to a baroness inspired his masterpiece (not for nothing did he title his autobiography The Son of a Servant). In the booklet, Birgitta Steene puts the playwright's career in further perspective, while Peter Mathews does the honors for the director. The supplements conclude with a short Sjöberg interview from 1966, a moving made-for-TV documentary from 2006 (Miss Julie: 100 Years in the Limelight), and the US theatrical trailer. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
An immaculate and definitive screen adaptation February 22, 2002
Dave Godin (Sheffield, England)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
Some films are so utterly faultless and brilliantly made that one is almost at a loss to find enough superlatives with which to praise them, and yet, at the same time keep it credible. MISS JULIE is one such film, and it seems entirely fitting that one of the greatest Swedish films ever made should be based on the work of one of Sweden's greatest writers. Every single aspect of this film is perfect; the black and white photography, the wonderful musical score by Dag Wiren, the acting from all the cast, but in particular from Anita Bjork who sets a standard in playing Miss Julie that could hardly be bettered. The play which provides the screenplay is of course devastating with the inexorable interplay between class and rank, and human desire and lust overlapping and intertwining, and too, the now almost forgotten concept of "duty" and "honour". If you like movies that make you think, eat away at your heart and memory long after you have seen them, then I cannot recommend MISS JULIE more highly. In the fifty years since it was made, its brilliance has not diminished one jot. A masterpiece and a film to truly treasure. My one regret with the VHS print is that although the sequence is intact, the lettering from the original credit titles has disappeared.
Things we can do for mending a broken heart! November 6, 2005
Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Strindberg seemed to anticipate the ontological loneliness, the boredom, the immature frivolity and the no sense of living around a impetuous young who having been rejected by her fiancée decides to flirt and eventually seduce her servant.
If you watch this film with the glasses of the actual society, you will find it something dated, but if you observe from another perspective, you will find interesting clues that may lead you to link the essence of the Existentialism (Think in Albert Camus The foreigner) and three outstanding films released after: Joseph Losey ` s The Servant, Bergman 's The silence and Bertolucci `s Last Tango based on Alberto Moravia.
It's a crime to arouse a passion only to satisfy a caprice.
 A classic play brought to the screen March 9, 2008
Ted (Pennsylvania, USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film
Miss Julie is based on a well known 1888 play August Strindberg with the original Swedish title of Fröken Julie. The play has been adapted in to a movie over a dozen times.
The film won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It is about a aristocratic young woman living with her father who has broken up with her fiance and begins to be attracted to a servant in their mansion. They fall in love but societal norms prevent a marriage between common people and the upper class.
The special features are excellent as well. There is a television documentary about the play that inspired the film. It includes material about the 1999 US/British film adaptation. There is also a theatrical trailer, an archival interview with Alf Sjöberg, and a video essay by Peter Cowie.
This is a great film and makes me want to see the other versions. This one no doubt is the most well known.
before the age of glamour February 9, 2010
Alan Turing (Fair Lawn, NJ United States)
Even though by the expression "Age of Glamour" people usually refer to the time between two great European wars, in the cinema world the age of glamour came around late 1950's, with the arrival of color. Surely even in the beginning of XX century tons of cheap black and white melodrama was produced, but after the "new wave cinema" and "kitchen sink realism" have petered out it became more and more difficult to produce anything serious even in the indie niche market, until late 80's when the whole movie industry essentially became children movie industry.
Films like "Fröken Julie" bring us back to the years when the movies were still produced "in earnest" and watched not "for fun" or "for kicks" or to get thrilled - but to feel empathy and to understand other human beings. Film is based on August Strindberg's play, which was written, like many of his works, to express his frustration and spite he felt towards women. While this attitude won't find too many open supporters today, it difficult to deny Strindberg's work its seriousness and expressive power.
The film "Fröken Julie" is definitely a match to the play in every sense. It's very realistic, showing life in Sweden with love and knowledge of detail, but also - with uncompromising frankness. Strindberg play's burning misogyny is fully transferred to the screen. Countess Berta, miss Julie's mother (Lissi Alandh) is shown as a live monstrosity, destroying the life of her husband and making her daughter insecure, manipulative and cruel towards everybody and anybody.
The film is produced in 1951, and its influence on Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" (1957) is beyond doubt.
Both Beautiful and Well-done. January 31, 2010
Ted Byrd
Director Sjoberg managed to put his own stamp on this film version of Strindberg's play while remaining true to the spirit of the original. Where the theatrical drama took place within the confines of a kitchen, with exterior action being suggested by the dialog or off-stage sounds, the film opens up to a vivid and eye-entrancing exterior world of imagery, motion, and and pastoral vistas captured in a beautiful black and white cinematography that is sometimes expressionistic, other times impressionistic.
The expansive range of visual stimuli certainly gives a different feel, or perhaps it should be said that it adds an extra dimension to that of the play, but the core elements of the drama remain the same - the battle of the sexes, class struggle, new forms of thought versus reactionary opposition, and the psychological factors that lie behind human behavior.
Ironically, in my opinion, the sweeping and spacious scenery in the film adds a more comprehensive and inclusive touch of reality to the story than the confined stage version, but the grandeur of those scenes almost introduces a romantic element, which was far from Strindberg's intention in the play.
While this is a naturalistic story, one supposed to be based on strict realism, it could be argued that circumstances are so extreme in the plot, that while it may be realistic, it is by no means typical. Miss Julie has been warped by the obsessions of a mother whose ultra-feminist views border on lunacy. This man-hating outlook is at war in Miss Julie's soul with the natural carnal attraction she feels for the opposite sex. Her inner conflicts drive her toward an unfortunate affair with a servant - a man who is coarse and a cad beneath a thin veneer of polish and civility.
Given the social restraints of the time and place, the outcome of the of the mixing of all these volatile ingredients seems very credible, and realistic, as presented by the film. But the thing which gives life to both film and play is the vivid characterizations of Miss Julie, and to a lesser degree, Jean, her lover. Anita Bjork is excellent in this film version as Miss Julie. Her appearance is aristocratic, and her speech and mannerisms seem tailor-made for the role. Though her role calls for extreme exhibitions of emotion, she delivers a performance that is pure and unmarred by melodrama.
The pastoral glimpses of Swedish rural life of the late 19th century, with the peasants' celebration of mid-summer's eve provides an interest which is both quaint and piquant. The elegance of the lives of the gentry is very effectively contrasted with the harsh restricted everyday existence of the peasantry.
Exquisitely filmed, with excellent performances all-around, this is a movie that is well-above average for it's time(1950), or any other time. It was considered daring and experimental when it was released, and, in my book, stacks up well against modern films; truthful and probing, but not stooping to bad taste. Among the extra features on the Criterion DVD are a video essay by Peter Cowie and excerpts of an interview with the director, Alf Sjoberg.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
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