The easiest way out of dealing with an embarassing white elephant like Bergman's Now About These Women … is to follow everybody else in sweeping it away under the carpet as a laborious attempt at farce. To do so, however, is to ignore a haunting aftertaste of quiet melancholy which lingers long after the film is gone. It also happens to be enchanting to look at and frequently extremely funny—so much so that it commands a second visit; and this time one penetrates the outer defences to discover why it appears to be limping so heavily. (p. 146)

Bergman takes amiably malicious revenge on his critics…. These humiliations, shot with the full barrage of silent comedy techniques to the jazzy accompaniment of "Yes, We Have No Bananas" on the soundtrack, are often deliriously and unexpectedly funny…. Yet, even though they make up the bulk of the film, these sequences...