Fanny and Alexander follows the lives of two children, starting in a setting of their warm and welcoming extended family which overturns when their father, Oscar, dies. Their mother marries a bishop, and the scene changes to puritan humiliation. A semi-autobiography, Ingmar Bergman modelled the merest movements of the characters in some scenes directly on his memories, but combined this with celebrated sequences of improvisation. It is one of the greatest films ever made – and yet makes a cold comparison with the miniseries from which it was edited.

Originally shot for television, the film ran for more than five hours. Bergman aimed to halve the length for the theatrical release, but felt conflicted removing more than an hour - it still went out at more than three. Looking at what he was prepared to lose, we learn something from the film, and can investigate one of the few criticisms it receives: that it was ‘the attempt of a great artist to reach the masses’.

Both cuts happen in ambiguously magical worlds. They is some explicit magic, but it is hinted that most is in the imagination of the main character - Bergman’s alter-ego -: Alexander. The television version has even more contentious material. At one point, Alexander’s step-father locks him in an attic. In the film, the only time the attic is actually seen is when his mother rescues him. The television version has a terrifying (yet still slow-paced and brightly lit) scene of Alexander being menaced by ghosts. If they are real ghosts, then they are uniquely humane in their role; most of Bergman’s ghosts existing to humble rather than to scare. If they were Alexander’s creations (which the scene’s ommission suggests they are), this becomes a terrifying demonstration of the curse of Bergman’s imagination.

Smaller supernatural events are removed. Alexander has a vision of the Grim Reaper at the beginning of the film which is removed here. The original also extends the only magical scene that does not include Alexander: Isak, a rabbi, standing up after a religious experience, implying the power of it knocked him over.

The scene of the father’s death is longer, giving his actual last words: his surprisingly optimistic view of death, his request for a simple funeral, and the murmur of ‘Eternity’ to his widow. Funnily enough, the funeral is still in the film version – it is laughably lavish. This might have been under the orders of an insistent colonel, who appears in the TV version to offer his condolences and ensure, in no uncertain terms, that his regiment will be at the funeral.

An extensive deleted scene has Isak reading a story to Fanny and Alexander. It is read from what he calls ‘a book of stories, thoughts, words of wisdom, and prayers’ in response to Alexander’s uncharacteristic curiosity. The story describes a young man’s seemingly pointless pilgrimage, an oddessea of spiritual metaphors. Alexander has a surreal dream containing several more. The whole thing is an epic expression of Bergman’s desire to know God.

Alenxander’s Grandmother, Helena, generally gets more development in the TV series – a dejected phone conversation subtly hints that she loves Isak, despite his designs on her head maid. Isak’s adopted nephews also receive more and mystical development. One of them describes an encounter with a ghost to Alexander at one point in the series. They both laugh, but he conversationally continues talking about the ghost humiliating itself. He then says he is an atheist, and that as a puppet maker it is his role to create the believable - it is the audience who create the unbelievable. This brings the atheist feelings of the film to a point, mocking the pretention of the clergy.

In the television version, Oscar happily brings the theatre with him wherever he goes before he dies, doing improvs for party tricks, and in one extended sequence, mystifies his children and their cousins with his skill. Both versions show Alexander putting on a display with his magic lantern, a reference to Bergman’s favourite childhood toy, a proto-cinema. This filmic symbol, in the television version, is juxtaposed against a theatrical one. Oscar comes in and with the power of atmospheric storytelling alone, turns a nursury chair into a jewelled throne. Ironically, it is Sven Nykvist’s exaultable cinematography makes it something particularly amazing for us.

In addition to the reverence to Hamlet shown by the film though, the children’s letting down is the first we see of Emily’s incredible depth of involvement in the theatre. As with many Bergman characters, her profession as an actor is her life. Among the deleted scenes are several soliloquies where she says that her life is a masquerade, putting a shocking spin on what is seen in the film version. It never explains what she saw in the bishop either. We guess that she falls in love partially out of grief, partially because this is a Bergman film and love sometimes just irrevocably happens, for better or for worse. In the TV series we see her real religious angst, hear her comparison of God with an actor, and understand the fact that grief was the first real emotion she had felt since she had her second child, and that she was confused.

When consoling the acting troupe, she stands by her husband’s coffin and tells them that in addition to the business, his last words were of Fanny and Alexander – as far as we can see, this is a lie, which she tells to humanise herself in their eyes. But she is more honest to them at times than anyone else, talking openly of how acting has altered her personality. But no matter how dead Emily says she is, it is not difficult to acknowledge the amount of grief she must feel in losing the theatre. A subtle deleted reference to this is a wide-angle long shot of her new family walking through town, next to her closed theatre.

The relationship between Emily and the Bishop is developed much better by the TV version. She is excited to hear he is doing the christmas service at the beginning, even though her husband is still alive. When he comes to offer his condolences to the family after the death, Alexander hides in a cupboard, but when the family is gathered (meeting the bishop for the first time in the film) they are utterly submissive to him, a religious comment as well as an emotional one. The Bishop lecherously takes Emily aside to console her, and we see Alexander whisper to Fanny. Emily is intriguingly resistant though, shying away in grief. But he follows her and puts his arm around her, and in this we see his intentions for the first time.

In both versions, Emily sneaks out to visit Oscar’s mother, Helena. In the film, she arrives in one scene, and in the next she is going. The television version retains their conversation, where she shows how much she has come to loath her new husband, how terribly he treats her children, and how her dulled acting skills made her fail to see through his religious facade. This is another reference to the idea of the theatre of christianity, as well as a prediction of the Bishop’s eventual breakdown. These parts are intensely Bergmanesque – it’s as if Emily is a character from another film.

Two banquets are held, both are cut slightly. This whole focus is a charming indulgence on the part of Bergman, who never paid any attention to his own children or families. There is one deleted scene however, where all of the family values come together. Gustav and his remaining brother, Carl, come to the bishop’s house to take Emily away from him, the children already having been rescued. It is the most uplifting scene in the history of cinema. The fury of Gustav, world’s most lovable philanderer, coming out for the sake of rescuing his sister-in-law is priceless. And after the bishop lecherously responds with a detestable diatribe on human nature, Carl’s piercing, down-to-earth translation of his callous bullshit shot right back at him is fearsome to behold. Gustav’s threats to the bishop’s reputation also make you realise that you’re watching a battle between debauchery and puritanism, so it’s still extremely incisive. This is followed by Emily, puzzlingly, coming in to tell her brothers in law that she is happy with the bishop. I believe that she is taking an opportunity to be an actress again, but it’s wide open to interpretation.

We also see Carl’s real professional angst, some of his true feelings about the family, and his hatred of Christian indoctrination. We find out about his waning sexual prowess, his slightly paedaphilic lusts and his desire to blame anyone but himself for these things. This is all related to his wife, and it becomes bizarre that he could stay with her, but he reveals why he does: she is the only person who loves him. He has a whole other scene as well. His mother watching him out of a window, he instructs his wife to ask her for money. He tells her to complain of his depression and suicidal tendencies (making his personality rather shallower, though not his performance). In doing this seems to be dictating how the rest of their marriage will figure out. His wife screams that she won’t, and Carl begs God to be spared his farce – an extremely Bergman-esque statement.

Broadly speaking, the abridged Fanny and Alexander is less of a Bergman film. Less theatre, personality, and thematic indulgence, more story-orientation and simplicity. Some omissions are a specific testament to that: a bit-part maid is interrogated by a child as to why she doesn’t smile at Christmas. She replies that some people have sad memories, and tells the child that she’ll try to smile. Then there’s some indulgent cinematography, mostly silent, though one scene is for no apparent reason shot from a different angle.

Some parts really were worth cutting: perhaps two minutes of the 124 that were left out. Some locations and facts were overestablished, even if they were beautiful. The kind of things one might often associate with being trimmable fat were all left in though: lingering shots which show the same thing for several seconds are, with one or two exceptions, as long as ever they were.

The film version, essentially, retains the atmosphere of the original, and much of the power. But its focus on children over adults (Alexander’s part is, aside from the ghost scene, untouched) and its highly deliberate discrimination makes it a film made for the masses, and maybe for the Oscars, but not for the makers.