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Night Is My Future

Released Jul 1, 1963 1h 27m Drama List
57% Tomatometer 7 Reviews 48% Popcornmeter 250+ Ratings
A young blind man seeks to break his spell of despair through the companionship of an understanding young girl.

Critics Reviews

View All (7) Critics Reviews
Trevor Johnston Time Out This is one film Bergman didn't wrench from the depths of his soul. Jan 26, 2006 Full Review Bosley Crowther New York Times Cinematic juvenilia of a painful sort. Rated: 1.5/5 May 10, 2005 Full Review Tim Brayton Alternate Ending The opening sequence... feels like an insert from a much more interesting film by a much more interesting filmmaker. Rated: 3/5 Jun 19, 2020 Full Review Dwight MacDonald Esquire Magazine A drearily sentimental little film... I cannot think that Bergman is pleased to have this apprentice botch presented to American audiences as if it were his latest work. Aug 9, 2019 Full Review Fernando F. Croce CinePassion Shots are often fumbled, yet the need for human touch is profoundly evoked in its physicality and its spirituality Mar 14, 2010 Full Review TV Guide Very early Bergman film (he had directed 16 films before all the critical acclaim) starring Malmsten as a man who struggles against blindness that happened to him in the military. Rated: 2.5/4 Aug 29, 2006 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (7) audience reviews
Audience Member The most romantic movie from <i>Ingmar Bergman</i> I've seen so far. Not so depressing either with a positive message. However I will forget this movie quite soon as I do with most of his movies. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member the story of 'Music in Darkness' could, with little difficulty, be transposed to Hollywood in its more sentimental attitudes - a handsome, wealthy, artistic young man becomes blind after an accident during military service; after harrowing experiences of humiliation, exploitation and degradation, he learns to live with his disability, guided by love. And the young Bergman was not averse to manipulating the melodramatic tricks of Hollywood, although his use of them are satisfyingly sadistic - the tense attempt in the opening sequence of the hero to rescue a puppy who has strayed into the line of an army firing practice - so much sentimental weight is attached to the cute liddel doggie that we barely register what actually transpires, the shooting of a human being; the near-Hitchcockian sequence where the hero, abandoned by a blind acquaintance, stumbles onto a railway line, with a train approaching behind him. Hollywood films dealing with disability have two functions - to wrest easy tears from an audience that generally, thankfully, doesn't have to deal with that kind of trauma in real life; and to chart the process of socialisation of an unwitting outsider, to bring a model citizen alienated by experience back into the fold. Bergman isn't really interested in either of these things - his snobbish hero is not easy to warm to, and the promised socialisation at the end is distinctly ambiguous, and not sanctioned by many of the community members. Where a Hollywood film might close with the exultant union of the disabled person and his lover, Bergman ends with an uncomfortable coda, where the lovers must put their decision to the social test, and where the future stumbling blocks are disconcertingly laid out. It is anxiety we feel for the lovers and their uncertainty, not a rosy, complacent glow. Even at this stage in his career, Bergman has other interests. It is remarkable, in a genre film, how many of the themes, figures and motifs of his later masterpieces are present - the artist hero, whose journey with his art paralells a kind of spiritual or interior struggle; the difficulties of even the best-intentioned heterosexual relationships, battered not only by external circumstances, but by pride, whim, cruelty, self-pity etc.; the obstacles of family and organised religion; the mirroring of a physical disability with interior deterioration. Bergman's most characteristic work is identified by the tension between (emotional) excess in content and extreme austerity in form. His early melodramas, conversely, are expressionist extravaganzas, with their heavy use of twisted camera angles, shadows, deep focus and obtrusive music. Expressionism is generally a projection of interior states on the external world - what is interesting here is that the hero has no vision of any sort to colour the real world, so that the expressionism is a genuine interior projection, and the play of light and darkness in the mise-en-scene, the heightened artificiality of certain scenes (e.g. his reunion with Ingrid in a fogged wood) all attest to his journey in a more honest way than the conventional plot. Bergman charts this journey as a kind of spiritual pilgrim's progress - in his first dream/vision after his accident, as well as meeting big fish and sirens, Bengt is dragged down into a hellish slime, by disembodied hands - if we remember Dante's 'Inferno', Hell is defined by darkness. The film's central section, where the hero's blindness is tested in social situations, where he is rejected as an artist, forced to find employment with thieves and grotesques who rob him, where, through his own class idiocy he loses the girl he loves, is a kind of Purgatory, where he must purify himself of the moral flaws the world had inculcated in him, where he becomes genuinely humble and selfless. Heaven is concentrated in the marriage - there is a genuine spiritual bond between the two lovers, from encouragement Ingrid gives him at the funeral even though he doesn't know she's there, to her sense that he is in trouble with the train. After all, the woman who brings them together is called Beatrice! Needless to say, Bergman is less religiously ecstatic than Dante. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Audience Member Nothing here is going to bowl you over -- it's practically a Hollywood drama, everyone wears their emotions on their sleeves and there's not a hint of subtlety or insight. The score is cheesy and overbearing, it's hard to believe he wanted it that way. It does look nice, though. Lots of shadows and contrast, tracking shots, dramatic angles. The brief "hell" sequence early in the film is perhaps the most surreal thing Bergman's ever done. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member Perhaps the most "Hollywood-ey" of Bergman's films, but the man still knows how to tell a story well and make it interesting. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member (****): [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] I liked the story and the characters. This is a lesser-known film from Bergman, but I found it to be just as excellent as many of his other well-known films. AKA: [i]Music in Darkness[/i] Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/18/23 Full Review Audience Member ealmente without words and imagen! Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/02/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Night Is My Future

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis A young blind man seeks to break his spell of despair through the companionship of an understanding young girl.
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Producer
Lorens Marmstedt
Screenwriter
Ingmar Bergman, Dagmar Edqvist
Distributor
Embassy Pictures
Production Co
Terrafilm
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Swedish
Release Date (Theaters)
Jul 1, 1963, Original
Runtime
1h 27m