Laura Hubner's book is among the first to analyze key films directed by Ingmar Bergman throughout his lifetime. Various kinds of "illusion" in Bergman's work (the mask, identity, dreams, and visions) are explored at both thematic and formal levels, positioned within wider concerns and perspectives such as cultural and artistic influences on Bergman's creative output, the phenomenon of Bergman as "art film" director, debates about modernism and postmodernism, and emerging feminist discourses on the multiplicity of identity.