The Touch () is a 1971 romantic drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Elliott Gould, and Sheila Reid. The film tells the story of an affair between a married woman and an impetuous foreigner. It contains references to the Virgin Mary and the Holocaust. Produced by ABC Pictures, The Touch was Bergman's first English-language film, but shot on the island of Gotland in Sweden in 1970. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist shot it in Eastmancolor. Gould, cast over Paul Newman and Robert Redford, believed Bergman's screenplay was semi-autobiographical. The film received mixed to negative reviews and failed at the box office. It has since had a limited rerelease by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2011 and a home media release by The Criterion Collection in 2018. Plot In a small town in Sweden, Karin is a housewife, married to a hospital physician named Andreas and bringing up their two children. Visiting the clinic where her mother is ill, she finds her dead and, overcome with sorrow, is seen by David, an American archaeologist. The couple ask David to dinner at their house and he tells them about his work at a medieval church, where a 500-year-old wooden statue of the Virgin Mary has been uncovered. He also tells Karin that he fell in love with her the day he saw her at the clinic. Karin visits David in his apartment and agrees to have sex with him. She tells him this is her first affair and that she is uncertain if she is in love with him, but it is significant for her. As the affair continues, David's moods always prevail and he is frequently distant, overbearing, and angry. When she shows up under the influence of alcohol, and having failed to quit smoking as they agreed, he slaps her. Later he shares his family history with her, telling her many of his relatives were murdered in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Eventually, Andreas visits David, revealing he has been receiving anonymous poison pen letters telling him David is having an affair with Karin. David dismisses the visit as absurd, and argues when Andreas reminds him that he had cared for David after an attempted suicide. In the church, David shows Karin the restored statue of Mary, telling her that it is being consumed from inside by a previously unknown species