[In] the disbalances of Hour of the Wolf, Bergman was paying some of the immense psychological price that must be exacted for working so near the line between sanity and madness; of all directors, he is the most personally brave in the sense of being willing to work with dangerous psychic material—to dredge, as he himself once said, down into the primitive levels of infancy when we are all frighteningly psychotic.

Shame returns nearer the surface again; it is safer, less daring…. There are no "ideas" in Shame. Except perhaps for the last shot, the film would make sense without its sound track. Indeed, much of what the characters say does not really make much sense anyway. Bergman has long abandoned the role of the Great Dubber, who used to put into his characters' mouths important thoughts about God, life, and the loneliness of man in an...