Directed by Mai Zetterling • 1966 • Sweden
Starring Ingrid Thulin, Keve Hjelm, Jörgen Lindström
Outrageous and explosively controversial (the Venice Film Festival refused to screen it publicly, while John Waters has called it his favorite film), Mai Zetterling’s second feature is a blazing psychosexual odyssey with heaving Freudian flourishes. On the eve of his marriage to his fiancée (Lena Brundin), Jan (Keve Hjelm) returns to his childhood home—a sprawling estate stuffed with antiques—where he relives his memories of his beautiful, decadent, mercurial mother (Ingrid Thulin) and finds himself forced to confront his unresolved Oedipal longings. Seamlessly interweaving past and present, carnivalesque camp and potent symbolism, NIGHT GAMES functions as both a feverishly perverse family portrait and a serious statement on the tormented soul of a modern Europe reckoning with the demons of its past.
Up Next in Eurothrillers
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La piscine
Directed by Jacques Deray • 1969 • France
Starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice RonetThe bright sun of the French Riviera is deceptive in this alluring work of slow-burn suspense from thriller specialist Jacques Deray and legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Formerly one of Euro...
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Z
Directed by Costa-Gavras • 1969 • Algeria, France
Starring Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene PapasA pulse-pounding political thriller, Greek expatriate director Costa-Gavras’s Z was one of the cinematic sensations of the late sixties, and remains among the most vital dispatches from t...
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The Ear
Directed by Karel Kachyňa • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
This paranoid surveillance thriller unfolds over the course of a tense, turbulent night in the life of Ludvík (Radoslav Brzobohatý), a Communist party official, and his wife Anna (Jiřina Bohdalová). Returning home from a party one evening, the pa...
