Excellent, a Must See

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It took me a while to get round to watching 'Elvira Madigan', having heard a lot of good things about it, such as the visual look, the music, the emotion and Pia Degermark, while also hearing it being dismissed for sentimentality, for having little story and with not enough insight on illicit sex relationships.Found 'Elvira Madigan' to be a truly beautiful film and that all the good and most striking assets mentioned are correct. There are some great cinematic love stories, the likes of 'Casablanca', 'Beauty and the Beast', 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Remains of the Day' being classic examples . And classical music (Mozart being one of my favourite composers, while appreciating highly Vivaldi) is hugely special and important to me Always has been from a very early age, coming from a musical family and being raised on it, and helped me try and block the bullying endured in school for looking, sounding and acting "different and against the norm". 'Elvira Madigan' may not quite be one of the greatest cinematic love stories, but it is to me one of the most underrated. It also should be better known beyond having one of film's most famous uses of classical music, that became very closely associated with the film and still is. It may be slow, slight and sentimental for some, others will be deeply moved and entranced. As one can figure, belong in the latter category myself.The story admittedly is a slight one, but not so in a way that badly handicaps the film. The atmosphere and emotion is what carries it along, and on that front 'Elvira Madigan' scores the highest of marks. Love stories from any film from the 60s were never this tender, haunting or delicate. A lot of the film is achingly moving and likely to have one reaching for the tissues, like the fight and apology sequence and of course the heart-wrenching tragedy.Visually, 'Elvira Madigan' looks ravishing. Loved that it went for a sumptuous pastel look rather than the monochrome one like one would think the film would go for reading the plot line. That way it makes the viewer appreciate the Swedish countryside at its most delightfully picturesque on film and gives Degermark's photogenic beauty an appealing innocence that makes the story and its outcome all the more painful emotionally.Mozart's 2nd movement from his twenty first Piano Concerto is one of film's most famous utilisations of classical music and also one of the most effective. For me the best use of Mozart outside of 'Amadeus' too. It is a divine piece and fits just as much with the atmosphere and the emotion, maybe it could have been used a little less than it was but there is no denying that the impact is there. Performances are good too, with Degermark being especially captivating.Overall, beautiful film. 9/10 Bethany Cox

An Army officer abandons his post and his family to run off with a tightrope walker. It sounds like a good premise for a comedy, but this is a vacuous drama that was quite popular in its day. Young lovers run through the forest, often in slow motion, chasing butterflies while the slow movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 plays on the soundtrack. That's pretty much all that happens until they kill themselves (this is not a spoiler as this announced at the beginning of the film), but it takes much too long to get to that point. The Andante from the concerto is one of Mozart's loveliest movements but a portion of it is played to death here. This film is little more than an amateurishly directed music video. Pretty but dull.

I was very excited for this film. I wanted to like it. Maybe I'm just cynical; I don't know. I greatly enjoy films which use extensive cinematography ("Days Of Heaven" "Lawrence Of Arabia" etc.), and so when I heard about this one, I was very glad. Oh, how it disappointed me. For one thing, it's less romance and more a celebration of mankind's folly, which is hardly a problem, all things considered, but it lacked the weight of the issue. What I didn't like was how neither Sixten nor Hedvig were compelling characters; they're as simple as the story they inhabit. When the ending arrived and they shot themselves, I couldn't help but wonder if they shot themselves for their lost love, or the shame of their incessant stupidity. Both characters are selfish and immoral, and while Hedvig can be forgiven due to her youth, but Sixten is older and came from a situation which required legitimate maturity and responsibility, for he abandoned a wife, two kids and an officer's position in the military to accompany a young girl who couldn't give him much else than sex. This film is about love, but I saw very little of it between the two main characters. I understand the point of this film, a celebration of man's selfishness, but for one thing, that's farcically stupid. Selfishness is a reprehensible quality, and only brings suffering, which is another thing, the film makes light of that very subject. Neither character feels any remorse for what they've done, they're so blinded by love, their horrifically shallow love, they don't realize the consequences of their actions. So then they kill themselves. But why? Love. Okay. At this point, I won't bother asking.

Sorry, I have to include a Spoiler because the ending is one thing I really hated about this filmI found Elvira Madigan to be very distasteful. I saw it during its first U.S. release in - what? - 1968 or '69. Instead of being beautiful and romantic, I found it unpleasant. I know that now it is a cliché to show vomiting in movies, but this had the first explicit upchucking I had ever seen on the screen. Also, I never understood what was so `romantic' about a man killing his lover and himself. The last thing I have against this film is its now permanent attachment to the concerto that is used on its soundtrack. It is typical to find this citation: Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major ("Elvira Madigan") K. 467. Most classical musical nicknames were appended after the work's appearance and without the composer's knowledge or permission, but this is the only one I know of that didn't became standard until 200 years after composition. It is absurd that this little remembered movie should have its fame extended by an undeserved attachment to a musical masterpiece.