Product Description
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At the beginning of the 1960s, renowned film director Ingmar
Bergman began work on what were to become some of his most
powerful and representative worksthe Trilogy. Already a figure
of tremendous international accl for such masterworks as The
Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, Bergman
turned his back on the abundant symbolism and exotic imagery of
his 50s work to focus on a series of impacted, emotionally
explosive chamber dramas examining faith and alienation in the
modern age. Utilizing a new cameramanthe incomparable Sven
NykvistBergman unleashed Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light,
and The Silence in rapid succession, exposing moviegoers
worldwide to a new level of intellectual and emotional intensity.
Each film employs minimal dialogue, eerily isolated settings, and
searing performances from such Bergman regulars as Max von Sydow,
Harriet Andersson, nar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin and nel
Lindblom in their evocation of a desperate world confronted with
Gods desertion. Drawing on Bergmans own severely religious
upbringing and ensuing spiritual crisis, the films in the Trilogy
are deeply personal, challenging, and enriching works that
exhibit the filmmakers peerless formal mastery and fierce
intelligence. The Criterion Collection is proud to present The
Ingmar Bergman Trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and
The Silence.
.com
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Between 1961 and 1963, Ingmar Bergman released a remarkable
trilogy of so-called chamber dramas, each one concerned with the
futility of sustaining faith in God, family, love, or much else.
The series proved transitional for the internationally renowned
Swedish filmmaker, securing his crucial collaboration with
cinematographer Sven Nykvist (with whom Bergman would go on to
make his many masterpieces--including Persona and Cries and
Whispers ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005EBSF/${0} )--of the '60s,
'70s, and early '80s), and underscoring a new preference for
, relationship-driven stories, austere settings, and
haunting tones of emotional isolation and despair.
Through a Glass Darkly concerns a psychologically fragile woman,
Karin (Harriet Andersson), who seeks recovery from a nervous
breakdown while on a remote-island vacation with her family.
Unfortunately, her her (nar Björnstrand), a successful
writer, regards her with clinical detachment, her husband (Max
Von Sydow), a doctor, feels unavailing in the effort to treat
her, and her brother (Lars Passgard) is wrapped up in his own
quest for sexual fulfillment. Karin's descent into further
loneliness and delusion exacerbates the heretofore unspoken
alienation at the heart of this entire family, and drives the
characters to brood over the existence of God (or, in Karin's
case, imagine that God is the chilling spider hidden behind an
attic door). Through a Glass Darkly is a heartbreaking, powerful
work of art.
Winter Light reunites Björnstrand, this time playing a pastor
suffering a crisis of faith while ministering to a shrinking
congregation, and Von Sydow as a parishioner lost to acute
anxiety over the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Neither man
can help or heal the other, or even inspire renewed confidence in
practiced rituals and older, more certain views of the world. Set
on a chilly, Sunday afternoon, Winter Light's heavy stillness,
lack of music, preference for intense close-ups and distancing
long s, and barren setting all lead us inescapably into the
core of a profound silence, an echo chamber in which love can't
grow and religion rings hollow.
The Silence is the most abstract entry in the trilogy, a somewhat
eerie story of two sisters, Esther (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna
(nel Lindblom), and the latter's son (Jörgen Lindström), all
traveling by train to Sweden but forced to stay in a foreign
country when Esther's chronic bronchial problems require her to
rest. A stifling atmosphere, a desolate hotel, encounters with a
troupe of carnival dwarves, Anna's anchoring illness, and an
empty sexual encounter for Esther underscore the unnerving
feeling that God has abandoned these characters to dubious
salvation in their own connection. A highly memorable film. --Tom
Keogh