The Magic Flute (1975 film) The Magic Flute (1975 film) The Magic Flute () is Ingmar Bergman's 1975 film version of Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflöte". It was intended as a television production and was first shown on Swedish television on 1 January 1975, but was followed by a cinema release later that year. The work is widely viewed as one of the most successful films of an opera ever made, and as an unusual item in the director's oeuvre. Although Bergman carried out the project in his mid-50s, it was rooted in his youth. He first saw "The Magic Flute" at the Royal Opera in
The Smurfs and the Magic Flute the original "Thomas Crown Affair". It was released a year later in its native Belgium, and in some European territories subsequently. A book adaptation of the film, by Anthea Bell, was published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton in 1979 (). It was not until the success of Hanna-Barbera's "The Smurfs" cartoon that "Flute" began to gain widespread attention: in the early 1980s, Stuart R. Ross, head of First Performance Pictures Corporation, acquired the American rights to the film for US$1,000,000. In doing so, he sold those rights to Tribune Entertainment (television), Vestron Video (home video), and Atlantic Releasing