Bibi Andersson

In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of traveling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a game of chess for his life. The knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.

In this stark drama, Max Von Sydow plays Andreas, a loner who, despite himself, becomes involved with three of his island neighbors: a Machiavellian architect, his formless wife and the beautiful widow Anna (Liv Ullmann), a moralist who sustains herself with illusion. One of Bergman's first films to be photographed in color.

With the mysterious arrival of Babette, a refugee from France's civil war, life for two pious sisters and their tiny hamlet begins to change. Before long, Babette has convinced them to try something other than boiled codfish and ale bread--a gourmet French meal! Her feast scandalizes the elders, except for the visiting General. Just who is this strangely talented Babette, who has terrified this pious town with the prospect of losing their souls for...

Set in the 14th century, a knight returning home from the Crusades encounters Death who challenges him to a chess game. In the balance hang the lives of the knight and a group of traveling players.

At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast is a layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark.