Dreadfully Boring

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Mozart's final opera, The Magic Flute, gets the Ingmar Bergman treatment in this 1975 film.One of the most beautiful operas ever written, The Magic Flute is infused with Masonic symbolism and odd twists to the story - the people we think are good (Queen of the Night and the Three Ladies) aren't, and vice versa. Sarastro (Ulrik Cold) supposedly is holding the Queen's (Birgit Nordlin) daughter Pamina (Irma Urrila) captive, and the Queen, in a magnificent aria, implores Tamino (Joseph Kostlinger) to save her and promises her in marriage if he succeeds. There is also the birdcatcher, Papageno (Hakan Hagegard), whom he meets along the way, and three boys who serve as guides. The three boys are one of the best parts of the film.Bergman sets up the production as a staged opera, and often focuses on a little girl in the audience and her reactions. I especially loved his use of an air balloon in several scenes - he also uses outdoor footage, particularly before Pamina's suicide attempt. And Bergman's ending, showing Papageno and Papagena, is wonderful.Though this opera is beautifully realized by Bergman, I have seen and heard The Magic Flute (as well as sung it) too many times to have enjoyed most of the singing. Despite some of the magnificent voices to come out of Sweden, the casting here was based on age and physical correctness for the role. Hagegard, Kostlinger, and Urrila come off the best, but in the brutally difficult role of the Queen, Birgit Nordlin falls short - it's my understanding the high Fs were dubbed. The boys were wonderful. In the end, I much prefer to Gedda-Janowitz-Popp recording from years ago.I once took a master class from the head of the Zurich Opera, who said that Americans are often too careful and precious with Mozart, when in fact, when The Magic Flute debuted, it was like Holiday on Ice! The music is so heavenly, the characters of Papageno and Papagena so accessible, that one can really believe it.The Magic Flute, here done in Swedish, is musically a perfect opera, with the soaring "Dies Bildnis," the tremendous Queen of the Night arias, the soulful "Ach, Ich fuhls," the beautiful Pamina-Papageno duet, the attempted suicide scene with Pamina and the three boys, the delightful Papageno-Papageno duet, and the God-like intonings of Sarastro.This is a great way to introduce opera to a novice, and a great opera with which to do it, despite all the layers in the story. Just listen to the music, and become a convert.

Opera is hard to present as a movie, particularly an opera like The Magic Flute where the mixture of fairy-tale fantasy, serious concept risk at lesser hands to present a hodgepodge with no real idea what the director has in mind. Alternatively, others may strive to stress the imagery to the detriment of the substance. Losey's Don Giovanni is a case in point, where the sheer beauty of the surroundings averted attention from the music. There can be no better Magic Flute than Bergman's. The gradual movement of the story from the initial sight of the obviously fake scenery to the sublime ending where we are really transposed in the realm of Sarastro is incredible. The occasional pictures of members of the audience listening raptly is a marvelous touch. No words can do justice to this masterpiece. Watch it .

I have mixed feelings about this film some of which include a great deal of irritation. Let's deal with the opera first: the libretto by Mozart's fellow Mason, Schikaneder, is not in the same league with those of Mozart's most famous librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (Cosi Fan Tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni.). In fact, it's downright silly in places, even allowing for the Masonic symbolism. By present-day standards, it is also quite sexist. Sarastro has abducted Pamina from her mother "The Queen of the Night" and tells her she should not be under her mother's influence but she "needs a man to guide her." (Tamino.) It is also racist: Monostatos, one of the villains, is a Moor. But we cannot expect an eighteenth century opera to be "politically correct".Of course, this opera also contains some of Mozart's (or anyone's for that matter) noblest music generally sung by Sarastro or his priests. But, due to the libretto, I find the opera a less satisfactory experience as a whole than the more realistic Da Ponte ones. (The "Flute", of course, is related to the German Singspiel with spoken dialog and is not an Italian opera with recitative.) The cast of this production is largely unfamiliar to Americans except for Håkan Hagegård, the excellent Papageno but Josef Köstlinger was also excellent as Tamino. The singing is not uniformly excellent, though, and the familiar problem of who should sing "The Queen of the Night" is not solved here. Birgit Norden, who plays the part, has too light a voice which should really be that of a dramatic coloratura. She generally gets the coloratura passages but is less successful in the longer notes which often sound shrill to me. (Mozart wrote these parts for specific singers; in this case it was one Josepha Hofer. He often changed arias when the singer changed.) Maybe her acting is also too "Lady Dracula" for me and might be more of a cold-blooded you-know-what. The Sarastro (Ulrik Cold) also seems to have a bit too light a voice for the part. And the production seems more than a little creaky though I think the Swedish translation doesn't help.The overture is played while the camera shows the utterly rapt faces of the audience especially the beatific one of a little girl and I find this particularly tedious after a while. In real life, audiences, particularly children, tend to talk or fidget through an overture, I think. The dragon (originally a snake.) which pursues Tamino at the beginning is really more funny than terrifying and makes Tamino seem like a crybaby.The later scenes I thought were generally better and dramatically more convincing. Although I agree that Bergman is probably the greatest living film director (his newest film "Saraband", from 2003, has been getting rave reviews.), I think this film has probably been rather overrated.

I first saw Ingmar Bergman's version of W.A. Mozart's (1756-1791) Die Zauberflote on betamax way back in the 90's. I really fell in love with Mozart's works after that. This terrific 1975 rendition is magical and stays true to what Mozart probably intended it to be. A great opera singspiel.