Bergman announced that Fanny and Alexander (1982) would be his last film and, with the exception of the immediately following After the Rehearsal (1984 – itself a kind of coda), this had been basically the case until the 1990s, when he began directing again for Swedish television. The film exists in three forms: a film script published in 1979, a five-hour television production premiered in Sweden on Christmas Day 1982, and a shorter “theatrical” film (3 hr., 15 min.) edited for international release shortly thereafter. Although there are significant differences between the two film versions, as well as between those and the script, the fundamental story and its themes do not change.

The film's release was a major event, and it was advertised as both a summing up of Bergman's filmic career and a farewell to his audience – with some justice. With forty years of films now past, Fanny and Alexander can be seen as an attempt to restore the filmic vision of the 1950s and finally to overcome the discouragement, and even despair, of the 1960s and 1970s.3 It is, in the literary sense, an apology for this earlier vision and, in particular, for the theater, which has played such an essential role in it. It is thus also a justification of Bergman's own life's work as a filmmaker and a refusal to end his career with a film like From the Life of the Marionettes.