NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (December 2022): Criterion have transferred three films by Mai Zetterling, Loving Couples (1964), Night Games (1966) and The Girls (1968), to individual dual-layered Blu-rays. They are cited as being from "New 2K digital restorations". We reviewed New Yorker DVDs, from Project X (Oliver Groom), of Loving Couples and The Girls way back in 2005. In side-by-side comparisons the Criterion 1080P HD presentations are a large step up with more layered contrast, detail, and they don't have the slight greenish tinge of the SD counterparts that now also look boosted with the overt blackness obscuring information. Notable, as well, is Night Games which may be the best of the group with impressive close-ups. All three Blu-rays have max'ed out bitrates. These looked fantastic on my system.

NOTE: We have added 120 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use linear PCM mono tracks (24-bit) in the original Swedish language. There are no aggressive audio sequences that I recall. In Loving Couples the score is by Roger Wallis (Mai Zetterling's Amorosa and The Moon Is a Green Cheese) plus other music; Giuseppe Manente's Bagni di Lucca, Richard Wagner's Lohengrin: Uvertyr, Robert Lowry's Where Is My Wand'ring Boy Tonight and Wallis' own When I Met You in the Garden and other pieces. Night Games has no credited score and The Girls has a score credited to Michael Hurd (Mai Zetterling's Scrubbers.) The sound is flat and clean with consistent dialogue in the lossless transfer. Criterion offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Criterion Blu-rays provide a new 20-minute interview with author Alicia Malone author of The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women, who discusses Mai Zetterling's journey from actor to director, her return to her home country of Sweden to direct films in the 1960s, and why her work isn't better known today. Included is the 1989 documentary Maybe I Really Am a Sorceress. It is a 1 1/4 hour, 1996, documentary broadcast on German television by Katja Raganelli. It is an intimate portrait of director Mai Zetterling that includes interviews with Zetterling, David Hughes (Zetterling's ex-husband and the cowriter of Loving Couples, Night Games, and The Girls), and actors Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, and Bibi Andersson. Lines from the Heart was filmed at Mai Zetterling's home in France after the director's death - this seventy-five-minute 1996 documentary reunites The Girls actors Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnel Lindblom, who look back on their illustrious careers and discuss their craft, working with Zetterling, motherhood, and aging. There is also an interview, recorded in 1984, where Mai Zetterling recalls why she became a director; the making of her first feature film, Loving Couples; and how the response to her fourth, The Girls, impacted her career. There is also a dozen minutes of on-set footage and interviews shot for Swedish television during the making of Night Games and at its controversial premiere at the 1966 Venice Film Festival. The package has a liner notes booklet with an essay by film scholar Mariah Larsson.

Mai Zetterling's Loving Couples, Night Games and The Girls are remarkable films. Her work is often compared to Bergman, Buñuel, and Fellini. She worked in film and television in six decades - from the 1940s to the 1990s. Mai acted with such leading men as Tyrone Power, Dirk Bogarde, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Richard Attenborough, Keenan Wynn, and Stanley Baker often promoted as a sex symbol of that era. Her directed films were far ahead of their time frequently addressing gender division, motherhood and sexuality with feminist themes. Loving Couples was based on the novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna, and was banned at the Cannes Film Festival for its "sexual explicitness and nudity." It boasted the iconic cinematographer Sven Nykvist (The Sacrifice, Cries & Whispers, Fanny and Alexander, The Unbearable Lightness of Being etc.) It's hard not to think of Bergman with the artistic merit of these beautiful black and white films. The Criterion Blu-ray package is a must own, imo. Our highest recommendation.

Gary Tooze