“In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?”

Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of The Sacrifice (1986)

Tarkovsky on the set of The Sacrifice,  his final film. The house in the background burnt down while the film jammed in the camera. The crew could not reload in time, so it had to be reconstructed and burnt down a second time.

From the NYT review:

Andrei Tarkovsky, the Soviet expatriate director and writer of this work, which was made in Sweden, owes a lot to two veterans of the Ingmar Bergman troupe – Sven Nykvist, who did the photography, and the actor Erland Josephson, who manages at moments to achieve the sense of profundity for which the movie strives. And strives and strives every instant of its nearly two and a half hours of running or drifting time.