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Poster for After the Rehearsal

After the Rehearsal

1984 · 1h 10m · R Drama, TV Movie
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

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Overview

Rational, exacting, and self-controlled theater director, Henrik Vogler, often stays after rehearsal to think and plan. On this day, Anna comes back, ostensibly looking for a bracelet. She is the lead in his new production of Stindberg's "A Dream Play." She talks of her hatred for her mother, now dead, an alcoholic actress, who was Vogler's star and lover. Vogler falls into a reverie, remembering a day Anna's mother, Rakel, late in life, came after rehearsal to beg him to come to her apartment. He awakes and Anna reveals the reason she has returned: she jolts him into an emotional response, rare for him, and the feelings of a young woman and an older man play out.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
92%
Tomatometer
Fresh

What we are left with at the end of After the Rehearsal, however, is the very strong sense of an artist who has sacrificed many lives for the sake of his art, and now wonders if perhaps one of those lives was his own.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh

After the Rehearsal may well be another Bergman classic.

Vincent Canby, New York Times
Fresh

There is something liberating in the very schematism of the project: he no longer needs to pretend that his mouthpieces are real people.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

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