Through a Glass Darkly

Through a Glass Darkly is one of the best and certainly the ripest of Ingmar Bergman's creations, a film as subtle as Wild Strawberries but solider in substance.

You can freeze almost any frame of this film and be looking at a striking still photograph.

Elaborately rhetorical at the end, this 1961 film nevertheless develops its theme lucidly and with some of Bergman's most unforgettable sequences.

It is almost superfluous to note that the film is beautifully made: visually exquisite, ingeniously knit.

Not a pleasant film, it is a great one.

Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman's decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island.

Bergman's mastery with actors (there is absolutely never a bad performance in a single one of his films) and with the cinematic form (using space and mood to communicate his theme) is abundantly clear here.

A film in search of profound truths that it can only hint at having caught glimmerings of, and it's a truly remarkable experience.

Bergman's wintry film has beautiful moments and Andersson gives a great performance, but the film can't shake the weight of the disease-of-the-week movie feel.

The first of Ingmar Bergman's bleak but outstanding films from his trilogy of chamber plays about faith, alienation and the emptiness of life.

[Features] The usual fine performances from Bergman's regulars combined with a script that is not as ponderous as much of the director's other works.

Deservedly winning the 1961 Foreign Language Oscar, this gloomy and intense family drama, set on a romate island, is the first in a trilogy that explores issues of religion, faith, and human fraiglity.