Winter Light (1963)

Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Starring Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Allan Edwall, Max von Sydow, Kolbjörn Knudsen.

Pastor Björnstrand finds himself struggling with his faith and how to come to terms with servile impotence, unable to counsel a suicidal man gripped by fear of nuclear ruin (von Sydow) or to return the affections of his former mistress (Thulin). One of Bergman’s bleak and meditative pieces on the crisis of God—it’s the second entry in the loose “The Silence of God” trilogy alongside Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence—but not without cautious visual cues and the occasional mutilated irony. Presents a moral quandary and observes it in tightly-drawn quarters, oblique and far heavier on words than images despite the spare, cloistered and gorgeously dismal photography from Sven Nykvist; cinematically restricted even though the irresolute ideas and actorly focus provide plenty to absorb. Bergman named this as the favorite of his own films. Swedish title is Nattvardsgästerna, which translates to: “The Communicants.”

81/100