All These Women

Coming between The Silence and Persona, Ingmar Bergman's first film in colour is one of his few miscalculations. Co-written with actor Erland Josephson, this clumsy costume comedy seeks both to explore the elusive nature of genius and decry the parasitic insolence of critics, whose only acts of creation depend entirely on the destruction of another's work. Although there are flashes of Mack Sennett, Jacques Tati and Federico Fellini in the humour, biographer Jarl Kulle's encounters with a cellist's female entourage are resolutely unfunny. The harder Bergman and his splendid cast try, the more stilted the action becomes.