Structured as six interconnected episodes, Rabies depicts cruelty as a contagious force: each character, wounded or humiliated, passes that violence on to another. Filmed for Swedish television, Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of Olle Hedberg’s morality play presents human behavior as a relentless chain of transferred suffering.
Acting
Max von Sydow's simmering rage is terrifyingly controlled.
Direction
Bergman strips TV drama bare—six rooms, six infections.
Writing
Hedberg's structure: cruelty as arithmetic, not accident.
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Bergman shot this in two weeks for Swedish TV with zero budget, proving constraint breeds genius.
1958 Sweden's class anxiety bleeds through every episode; the 'contagion' is specifically postwar social shame.
SE
