Why was The Touch significant in Ingmar Bergman’s career?

The Touch (1971), also known as Beröringen, was significant in Ingmar Bergman’s career primarily because it marked his first English-language film.

With this production, Bergman shifted away from the isolated, bleak setting of his "Fårö cycle" of films—which included works like Persona and Shame—and returned to an urban environment. While the film explored more romantic subject matter, it maintained the director's characteristic focus on complex human dynamics, as the characters involved in the film's marital triangle remained as deeply conflicted as those in his previous, more austere dramas.1