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The Silence [DVD] [1963]
 
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The Silence [DVD] [1963]

Ingrid Thulin , Gunnel Lindblom , Ingmar Bergman    Suitable for 15 years and over   DVD
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
Price: £4.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

The Silence [DVD] [1963] + Winter Light [DVD] [1962] + Through A Glass Darkly [DVD] [1961]
Price For All Three: £25.99

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Product details

  • Actors: Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Birger Malmsten, Håkan Jahnberg, Jörgen Lindström
  • Directors: Ingmar Bergman
  • Writers: Ingmar Bergman
  • Producers: Allan Ekelund
  • Format: PAL
  • Language English, French, German, Swedish
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: All Regions
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Tartan
  • DVD Release Date: 19 Nov 2001
  • Run Time: 96 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00005RZQJ
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 10,831 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)

Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

The third in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "chamber works" featuring characters in isolated, existentially dramatic settings, The Silence, made in 1963, is set in Timoka, a fictional Eastern European town with its own made-up language. Stylistically more sensual and maximal than its austere predecessors Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light, it was both a success and a scandal in its day, featuring as it does scenes of masturbation, sex and even lesbian eroticism.

Jorgen Lindstrom plays Jonas, a small boy travelling with his mother Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) and aunt Ester (Ingrid Thulin). His aunt is dying of consumption, but his mother is a great deal more alive and smouldering with sexual energy. As the tension between the bedridden aunt and the frustrated mother mounts, Jonas roams the hotel corridors and chances almost surreally upon the hotels only other occupants--an elderly floor waiter and a troupe of performing dwarves. Meanwhile, his mother is picked up by a waiter in a cafe, is seduced by him in a church then engages in a traumatically miserable bout of hotel sex.

Sultry, full of incident and dreamlike cinematic spectacle (the performing dwarves, a rumbling tank, an overheated railway carriage) there's a sense of aimlessness and oblivion about The Silence, in which the godlessness of the universe, though never discussed, is implied throughout the movie. There is, however, a note of humanist hope struck in the conclusion, more convincing than the platitudinous finale of Through a Glass Darkly.

On the DVD: Bergman's notes explain how he had long nurtured the notion of setting a movie in an imaginary city where "the rules of society cease to exist", and how the young boy's curious wanderings were inspired by his first exposure to Stockholm as a child. Critic Philip Strick's notes reveal that Greta Garbo had at one point been mooted to make a return to the screen in this film and that in certain countries, censors insisted on separate screenings of The Silence for males and females. --David Stubbs

Special Features

DVD 5
Swedish
Region 0
Dolby Digital Swedish
Dolby Digital
Star And Director Filmographies
Scene Selection
Philip Strick Film Notes
Extract From Bergmans Book Images My Life In Film
The Bergman Collection Trailer
English

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant Bergman 17 April 2006
Format:DVD
This film is the final part of Bergman's trilogy exploring the nature and existence of God. He described the trilogy as moving from "certainty achieved" (in Through A Glass Darkly), to "certainty unmasked" (in Winter Light) and finally to God's silence "the negative impression" in this film. After making Tystnaden, Bergman "cast off" (as he put it) his faith in God, and would never again explore these themes in his films. Tystnaden is a dark, intense, slow-moving film with very little dialogue. Two sisters, together with a small boy, the son of one of the sisters and nephew of the other, are on holiday in a foreign country. The two sisters have obviously had a long-term incestuous relationship. One of the sisters is pulling away from this relationship, and having casual encounters with men she meets in this foreign country. The other is ill - and, in fact, dying. The boy is angelic in his demenour and character and is both caught between and ignored by the two women. He wanders round the hotel on his own, and meets some interesting characters. This is a fascinating, dark, subtle, difficult and rewarding film.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:DVD
The Silence concludes the trilogy of films that includes Through A Glass Darkly and Winter Light. Bergman shows us two sisters, Ester and Anna (with her son, Johan), moving to a strange foreign city. With a loose narrative structure, the scenes have an intensely claustrophobic feeling about them, while the town (we don't know where it is or what language is spoken) has a distinctly Kafka-esque feel. Overall, it is an extremely dark film which views with crushing pessimism human sexuality and desire. The most sensual of the trilogy, it is dreamlike and fluid in its camera work, and, as usual with Bergman films, it contains nothing less than stunning performances. In short: a bleakly-rendered masterpiece.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By Nettlewine VINE™ VOICE
Format:VHS Tape
This is the third film in Bergman's so-called "Faith" trilogy (with Through a Glass Darkly and WInter Light) and looks the best-realised of the three.

Two sisters spend time in a seedy hotel in an unspecified central European city while an unspecified military event takes place around them. Tempers fray as the frictions between the sisters come to the surface. One sister is sick and apparently a lesbian, the other is a single mother although sexually promiscuous.

Between them is her son, who goes on explorations around the hotel, encountering faintly bizarre characters.

The film is outrageously sensual and sexual, worryingly enough between the boy and his mother as much as anyone else, and also claustraphobic and sickening, as the ill sister's ailment takes hold. A foreigness takes hold of the centre of the film, with the sisters unable to communicate with each other and unable to speak the native tongue, thus adding to the claustraphobia.

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