Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

gavin6942 The Queen of the Night offers her daughter Pamina to Tamino, but he has to bring her back from her father and priest Sarastro. She gives a magic flute to Tamino and magic bells to the bird hunter Papageno, who follows Tamino and wants to find a wife. The duo travels in a journey of love and knowledge.We can tell this story was eating at Bergman's soul for a long time. During the 1960s Magnus Enhörning, head of the Swedish Radio, asked Bergman for possible projects and the director replied "I want to do The Magic Flute for television". Enhörning readily agreed and supported the project without hesitation. The characters of Frid and Petra in "Smiles of a Summer Night" (1955), and Johan and Alma in "Hour of the Wolf" (1968) pre-figure his conception of Papageno and Papagena, and Tamino and Pamina respectively in "The Magic Flute". The latter film includes a puppet-theater sequence of part of Act 1 of the opera.I am not a huge opera fan by any means, and I appreciate the way Bergman did this. The whole showing the audience thing? The intermission with the actors being themselves? The use of sets? It is like inviting us out to a real opera without all the stuffy, socially awkward moments that may occur. Most people probably would have cut the music and adapted the story into a movie script. This actually seems better, more pure. We get all the best of a real show without having to go to one or pay the high ticket prices.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This film is mythical both because the opera by Mozart is a real prodigious miracle of naive purity in a century of pure violence and horror that will end up with the blood bath of the French revolution and Napoleon, but also because the adaptation of this opera to the silver screen by Ingmar Bergman is considered as unique and historic.Though he uses some special effects, the director uses first of all a whole set of machines and means that are stage tools more than screen effects but they are obviously made visible in their mechanisms. No secret, no hidden trick. I call a spade a spade. And at times the director plays with our senses so that the three angels now and then look like three girls and in other sequences like three boys. All the animals are obviously stuffed animals or human beings dressed in the loose skins of animals. That is supposed to be meant for children, but at the same time it creates a universe that could be magic like the famous Wonderland but is in fact friendly and reassuring like Winnie the Pooh. Then that enables the director to concentrate on the human dimension of the opera. If the affair between Papageno and Papagena and all their Papagenis is simple, easy-going, as clear as spring water, the affair between Tamino and Pamina is quite more difficult to come and get through all kinds of obstacles and thresholds that have to be stepped over in order for the two to finally get together. But I would like to insist on one particular element in the plot. Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night is in fact kept prisoner by her mother as a vengeance against her father, Sarastro, who is the high priest of another religion than the religion of the triple goddess. He is the high priest of a temple dedicated to reason, to brotherhood, to what is quite clearly the 18th century ideal of free masonry. The Queen of the Night sounds like some kind of fable, fairy tale and is the last waning form of old paganism, of old animism that the triple goddess represents with its perfect form in the Ancient Greek mythology and its folkloric form in Germanic mythology. Shakespeare even turned them into the three weird sisters, three witches. Mozart is from his age but the mother absolutely wants her vengeance to be carried out by her daughter who is thus entrusted with killing her own father. Mozart is setting up the anti-Oedipal situation of a daughter killing her father to be the slave of her mother. It is so unnatural that we have the absolute right to wonder what was in Mozart's mind when he composed this opera. In 1693, at the end of the 17th century Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Thomas Corneille had composed and produced the very classic opera Medea that shows a similar vengeance from the mother against the father but this traditional story centers on the mother killing the children (two sons) to punish the father. Here Mozart distorts this tradition by building a totally psychotic situation that should normally lead to the worst possible tragic dramas. And yet he turns it around and makes it a victory of the reasonable and enlightened father over the vengeful and distorted-minded mother. But this is only possible because the child in question is a girl and not a boy which makes killing the father absolutely impossible since the father is the object of her primal desire. The most surprising element here is that Mozart seems to be following Jung and rejecting Freud. Mozart could not be that anachronistic of course since he could not know the future, but the director is quite another story.That leads to a double conclusion. Mozart probably had some problem with mothers since he was the victim of and at the same time the prodigy produced by his own father with no mother actually mentioned any time, but the director of the film makes it appear as if Mozart was symbolically assassinating his own father and yet saving him because of his great reasonable enlightenment. A very good adaptation of an opera to the silver screen and also a very good modern rewriting of the story and plot.The music is of course mesmerizing, though the Swedish language lacks some firm vowels and sounds, some clearer vocalic architecture due to the crushing of many vowels into some schwas hardly colored at times with some 'o' or 'a' or 'u' variations that make these vowels fuzzy and in contrast with the clear cut vowels of Papageno or Papagena. But of course we are biased by the fact we know the German version and the very rich vocalic architecture of this language.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Galina It is not surprising at all that having been a long-time an admirer of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music and especially his opera "Die Zauberflöte" ("The Magic Flute"), Ingmar Bergman has adapted it in one of the best and enjoyable operatic film ever made. Watching Bergman's presentation of "The Magic Flute" does not require from a viewer an extensive opera-going experience or familiarization with all his often morose psychological studies. "The Magic Flute" (the opera or/and the film) can be enjoyed on different levels. It has many hidden philosophical and political references which were relevant back in 18th century but it is also a beautiful and poetic fairy tale which has many funny scenes (thanks to Papageno, the bird-catcher) as well as lyrical and tender scenes between two young lovers, and the dark ones with the sinister sorcerers. I've seen "The Magic Flute" in the different countries, in different versions and adaptations but I enjoyed the most Ingmar Bergman's vision of it. In 1975 National Society of USA Film Critics awarded Ingmar Bergman with a Special Award - for demonstrating how pleasurable opera can be on film. There is nothing I can add only that Mozart + Bergman+ Flute = Magic.

MisterWhiplash The Magic Flute is a special kind of movie that may work better for fans of Mozart, or work better for fans of Bergman. And in general if you like opera it might hit your 'wow' button as being something different. Before getting to it, I was almost taken aback as I watched it, as I thought perhaps Bergman had picked this opera due it being incredibly tragic or emotionally draining (as I didn't know much about the opera aside from it being a Mozart one). It turns out this might be one of the only operas- maybe THE only- one I would consider ever watching again, or even hearing. As I'm not that big a fan of the kind of music (unless it's being done by Visconti on film or Woody's Match Point), it was a pleasant surprise to see Bergman make the opera right on the stage, putting all the artifice where it belongs. The very beginning of the film is particularly striking and interesting, with all of the close-ups suggesting this could be something different than it is- maybe something more 'heavy'- as it is once again lensed by Sven Nyvkist. But it isn't; this, along with Smiles of a Summer Night, are the most light-hearted films ever made by the usually tragic and introspective filmmaker.Mozart's tale is that of any given fairy tale, the kind that you either give yourself completely to as when you were a kid or not much at all. Sometimes one of the problems that comes when I try and watch an opera is really 'getting' a story out of it when I'm more focused on the singing and pageantry. But Mozart's story is simple enough- about a man (Tamino, played by Josef Kostlinger) trying to find a woman (Pamina played by Irma Urrilla) who has been offered to her by her mother the Queen, even as a bird hunter follows him. It could be a possible deterrent, too, with having the opera in total Swedish (sometimes glancing down at the words, all simple to a level little children might sign at), but I didn't mind that much either after a while. This is partly due to Bergman and Nykvist (and the production design and costumes and such, all lending to the more wonderful theatrical productions that Bergman was always capable of) keeping a good, lush hold on the production values and mood. But it's also due to the performers being rather good in their archetypal roles.Along with this, Bergman incorporates this as being a production going on by once in a while going backstage as the opera goes through its motions, more or less, with ease. It's a nice send-up to have that, as Bergman recognizes that through all of the cheesy bits of sets and lights, the actors are really what counts. And, of course, the filmmaker also shows a genuine affection for the music, and it becomes one of Mozart's most memorable, lively pieces at different points, providing moving melodies and songs, and even some doses of comedy with the couple Papageno and Papagena. It might not be for those who just can't take opera or classical music, and it might be strange for some Bergman fans to see right after Cries and Whispers or Shame. But if you give yourself to the material, and realize how beautiful escapist it can be, Bergman still kicks in his own style, without too much getting in the way, and it often fits together without conflict. A-