Winter Light (1962)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Film Review

Winter Light is the second chapter in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "chamber films" which explore faith and Man's relationship with God in the twentieth century. Sandwiched between Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence, Winter Light is a bleak, existentialist work which allowed Bergman to draw on his own personal experiences and to express the spiritual conflict he had endured in the years which preceded the making of this film.

Like the central figure in this film, Bergman (the son of a Lutheran minister) was brought up a Christian without having first experienced the need for God in his own life.  His faith was essentially borrowed, foist upon him by others, not acquired through his own spiritual yearning and intellectual examination of himself and the world around him.  As Bergman shows in this film, such a faith has no foundation and cannot endure - it will crumble and decimate the soul, will cause the “believer” to live a life weighed down by heavy doubts and an increasing certainty that his entire life is founded on a lie.

Such is the subject matter for Winter Light, Bergman's gloomiest, most introspective, most perfect film.  Whereas Through a Glass Darkly has a noticeably optimistic tone, with a group of unhappy characters gradually realising there may after all be a God, Winter Light is the antithesis, a work that implies the only way man can comprehend the world is by denying the existence of God.   The first film is a parable of instinctive love, the second one of reasoned hate.  When the scales finally fall from Tomas's eyes he not only discovers he has no God, he also realises that his own existence is a meaningless absurdity, that all those around him are freaks who demand not his sympathy, but his contempt.

Despite its austere presentation and grim subject, Winter Light has to be regarded as one of the most beautiful and intelligent films ever made, and certainly one of the most insightful and courageous explorations of the human psyche.  The film shows Bergman at his best - in both his writing and his direction.  There's not a single shot in the film that is superfluous or in any way defective; there's an economy and precision which virtually no other filmmaker can match. Sven Nykvist's cinematography skilfully emphasises the existentialist crisis that lies at the heart of the film - the bleak wintry landscape being a visual metaphor for the barren void in which Tomas finds himself, yet it is also so stunningly beautiful that you can hardly fail to glimpse the hand of a loving creator behind it.

Gunnar Björnstrand gives an extraordinarily effective and poignant performance as the pastor Tomas, conveying myriad inner feelings of disillusionment, anger and despair that visibly show a soul in torment.  As the pitiful spinster Ingrid Thulin is equally as impressive, as tragic a portrait of unrequited love as you can imagine.  Bleak and cruel it may be, but there's no denying that Winter Light is a miraculous piece of cinema.

Film Synopsis

Tomas Ericsson is the pastor of a small rural church in a Swedish village.  After a sparsely attended service, one of his parishioners, Jonas, admits to having doubts about the existence of God.  This causes Tomas to examine his own beliefs and he suddenly realises that everything he has dedicated his life to - God, Christ, the Church - is one great lie.  This emotional release drives him to open his heart to Märta, a spinster who has hoped to take the place of his dead wife.  Unable to withhold the truth any longer, Tomas reveals his true feelings for the unfortunate woman...