The Magic Flute (1975 film) singers, Håkan Hagegård went on to a prominent international career in opera and recitals. The film was reviewed from a musical perspective by Richard Evidon, who paid Bergman the compliment of praising the film as a realization of Mozart's own vision (cf. Kael's comment above on the "bewilderment" of previous directors): "Only Ingmar Bergman could have made this "Magic Flute"; but part of his achievement is in letting us forget the director's hand as we watch and are drawn closer to Mozart's sublime work." Following re-mastering by the Swedish Film Institute, a blu-ray edition was published by the BFI in
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