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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Binding: DVD
EAN: 5023965334725
Format: PAL
Number Of Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 80 minutes
Sales Rank: 88266
Theatrical Release Date: 1962
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Great Britain released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. LANGUAGES: Swedish (Dolby Digital 2.0), English (Subtitles), SYNOPSIS: On a cold winter's Sunday, the pastor of a small rural church (Tomas Ericsson) performs service for a tiny congregation; though he is suffering from a cold and a severe crisis of faith. After the service, he attempts to console a fisherman (Jonas Persson) who is tormented by anxiety, but Tomas can only speak about his own troubled relationship with God. A school teacher (Maerta Lundberg) offers Tomas her love as consolation for his loss of faith. But Tomas resists her love as desperately as she offers it to him. This is the second in Bergman's trilogy of films dealing with man's relationship with God. SPECIAL FEATURES: Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Production Notes, Scene Access, Trailer(s),
Amazon.com:
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--of the '60s, '70s, and early '80s), and underscoring a new preference for intimate, relationship-driven stories, austere settings, and haunting tones of emotional isolation and despair.
Following Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light reunites Gunnar Björnstrand, this time playing a pastor suffering a crisis of faith while ministering to a shrinking congregation, and Max 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 shots, 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 trilogy concludes with The Silence. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Masterpiece
Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna- literally The Communicants) is the middle film in Ingmar Bergman's Spider Trilogy (as it too references the God as a spider imagery), following Through A Glass Darkly, and preceding The Silence. Made in 1963, it represents a dramatic notching upward from the well made, but often melodramatic and symbolic, Through A Glass Darkly. Where the first film of the trilogy suffers from the overacting of Harriet Andersson, and some over the top displays of incest (for sex ... Read More
Rating:  - Spirituality crisis
I do not believe that there is a human being out there that at some point did not question the existance of God. Regardless if one believes in God or not, there is always a question about (un)certainty of his existance. What makes this film remarkable is that Ingmar Bergman is having a small town minister loosing faith. His own doubt is so intense, that even his parishiners seem to sense that something is off. As a result, only a few attend his masses and those few are desparate in their loneliness, ... Read More
Rating: - When God goes silent--what then?
At one point in this best of all Bergman films, the despairing pastor Tomas (Gunnar Bjornstrand) realizes that life would be comprehensible if there is no God. All the paradoxes and dilemmas of faith would vanish, and evil, revealed to be meaningless and nonpurposeful, would at least no longer be mysterious. This realization immediately leads into Tomas' final loss of the last shreds of his faith. The silence of God which has been tormenting him is at least seen to be a necessary silence, and that realization ... Read More
Rating: - "I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is Winter Light...,
...Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture." - Ingmar Bergman
"Winter Light", the second film in the writer/director Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "faith" or "Silence of God" (it follows "Såsom i en spegel" (1961) ... aka Through a Glass Darkly and precedes Tystnaden (1963) aka The Silence) is a masterpiece of minimalism with great performances and appropriate static, dark and gloomy "wintery" cinematography. This is a very personal and important for Bergman film ... Read More
Rating: - Ineffectual
An archaic religion (guess they haven't invented any new ones recently, well Mormonism is newish I guess) in rags and tatters, a preacher unable to do anything for anyone including himself. I saw these 3 movies out of order, watched Silence 2nd and this one last. Silence didn't seem to fit. Had nothing to do with "faith." Thought it was a bore, could see that it was a fine movie, but it was so slow and true to its title, there was almost no talking. I was bored. The 1st one (Through a Glass Darkly) was perfect, ... Read More
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