Through a Glass Darkly | Winter Light

“One of the best and certainly the ripest of Ingmar Bergman’s creations.”—Time Magazine on Through a Glass Darkly

“[I] was awestruck by its bleak, courageous power.”
—Roger Ebert on Winter Light

While vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family’s fragile ties are tested when daughter Karin (an astonishing Harriet Andersson) discovers her father has been using her schizophrenia for his own literary means. Winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Through a Glass Darkly presents an unflinching vision of a family’s near disintegration and a tortured psyche further taunted by God’s intangible presence. The first film in a trilogy that also includes Winter Light and The Silence, the drama also features Gunnar Björnstrand and Max von Sydow. (91 mins., 35mm)

In Winter Light’s stark depiction of spiritual crisis, small-town pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation. When asked to assist with a troubled parishioner’s (Max von Sydow) debilitating fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own uncertainty. The central film in Bergman’s aforementioned trilogy is also one of his riskiest and most powerful. With Ingrid Thulin. (80 mins., DCP)