The Magic Flute (1975 film) stage Bergman had hoped to direct a production at the Malmö City Theater. The origin of his filmed version was in the 1960s, when Magnus Enhörning, head of the Swedish Radio, asked him for possible projects and he replied "I want to do "The Magic Flute" for television". Enhörning readily agreed and supported the project without hesitation. The German-language libretto of "The Magic Flute" was the work of Mozart's collaborator Emanuel Schikaneder, who was also theatre manager and sang Papageno at the first performances in 1791. For the plot, see "The Magic Flute", and for details of the libretto see
The Magic Flute (1975 film) with the ominous face of Monostatos glimpsed over her shoulder. The scene in which Three Boys prevent Pamina's near-suicide takes place in the snow, and clearly not on the theater stage. The film was a great success. In its televised premiere (New Year's Day 1975), it reached a third of the population of Sweden, and in theatrical release it created "pandemonium at box offices around the world" (Pauline Kael) and delighted many critics. In her review in "The New Yorker", Kael wrote: Ingmar Bergman's film version of "The Magic Flute" is a blissful present, a model of how opera can