Bergman’s admiration for Mozart, evident elsewhere in films such as Smiles of a Summer Night and Hour of the Wolf,reaches its full flowering in The Magic Flute, a reverent adaptation of the composer’s two-act opera about the trials of Prince Tamino in the face of the malicious Queen of the Night. Crooned in Swedish by a cast of fresh-faced thespians, many of whom were making their screen debuts, the film is Bergman’s only musical and yet unfolds with a vibrancy and tunefulness that belies his relative inexperience in the genre. Singing and dancing emerge organically from spoken passages, offering an expressive outlet not typically granted to Bergman’s anguished, spiritually weary characters, and the director’s usual pessimism is likewise tempered in the face of Mozart’s abiding faith in the transportive, conquering power of love. Conceived as a television production in honor of the 50th anniversary of Sveriges Radio, the project was funded generously enough for Bergman to recreate Vienna’s Theater auf der Weiden in studio—to which the director draws constant attention in his proscenium-arch framing—though the delightfully handmade special effects and props call to mind less a regal 18th century auditorium than a puppet theater in a child’s bedroom.