"Ingmar Bergman's simple, masterly vision of normal war and what it does to survivors. Set a tiny step into the future, the film has the inevitability of a common dream. Liv Ullmann is superb in the demanding central role--one that calls for emotional involvements with her husband (Max von Sydow) and her lover (Gunnar Björnstrand). One of Bergman's greatest films, this is one of the least known."


"Bergman's magisterial confrontation with war, set in a characteristically ambivalent decor, either a peaceful farm somewhere in Sweden or a landscape from Goya secreting intimations of disaster. Here live a man and wife, indifferent to the war until it arrives on their doorstep to strip their lives to the bone. Presenting war with shattering power as a blindly destructive force, Bergman uses it brilliantly as a background to the real pain: the way the couple are forced to look at each other, and to realise that the only honest feeling they have about their relationship is shame. It ends with one of the cinema's most awesomely apocalyptic visions: not the cheeriest of films, but a masterpiece."


"A vague attempt by Ingmar Bergman to introduce social issues—war and politics—into his scheme of suffering. Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow are musicians who've taken refuge from an allegorical civil war on a remote island. The war gradually approaches them, and they're forced to act. Despite its evident sincerity, the film seems less like an indictment of intellectual and artistic irresponsibility than a quiet mea culpa. God, as usual, takes the rap."

"The film isn't about enormous brutality, but only meanness. It is exactly like what has happened to the Czechs. They defended their rights, and now, slowly, they are being submitted to a tactic of brutalization that wears them down. Shame is not about the bombs; it is about the gradual infiltration of fear...but Shame is not precise enough. My original idea was to show only a single day before the war had broken out. But then I wrote things, and it all went wrong—I don't know why. I haven't seen Shame recently, and I'm a little afraid to do so. When you make such a picture, you have to be very hard on yourself. It's a moral question."

Lars-Olof Löthwall: "An Interview with Ingmar Bergman"