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Through A Glass Darkly [DVD] [1961]

DVD ~ Harriet Andersson

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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This item: Through A Glass Darkly [DVD] [1961] DVD ~ Harriet Andersson
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The Silence [DVD] [1963] DVD ~ Ingrid Thulin
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Persona [1966] [DVD] DVD ~ Bibi Andersson
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	82% buy the item featured on this page: Through A Glass Darkly [DVD] [1961] 4.3 out of 5 stars (7) �6.98
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Product details

Actors: Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bj�rnstrand, Max von Sydow, Lars Passg�rd
Directors: Ingmar Bergman
Writers: Ingmar Bergman
Producers: Allan Ekelund
Format: Black & White, PAL
Language Swedish
Subtitles: English
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Classification: 18
Studio: Tartan Video
DVD Release Date: 19 Nov 2001
Run Time: 85 minutes

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

ASIN: B00005RZQK
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 8,775 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)
Popular in this category:
#82 in DVD > DVD Bargains > The Best of World Cinema

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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

Synopsis

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY won Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for the second year in a row. (It was preceded by THE VIRGIN SPRING, which won in 1960.) The picture represents Bergman's first experiment with what he referred to as the chamber play, featuring only four characters whose configuration resembles that of a string quartet. Karin (Harriet Andersson), a young woman recently released from a mental institution, is on holiday on a secluded island with her father, David (Gunnar Bjornstrand), a writer; her husband, Martin (Max von Sydow); and her younger brother, Minus (Lars Passgard). The presence of her family, who are caught up in their own problems and unable to offer her the love and emotional support she requires, proves detrimental to Karin's mental condition instead of bringing about her recovery. Soon she is undergoing an emotional crisis, culminating in the memorable hallucinogenic episode in which she envisions God as a spider.
This was the first film of Bergman's trilogy of faith--which also includes WINTER LIGHT and THE SILENCE--though this is a concept discredited later on by Bergman himself, who ultimately saw few thematic links among the three movies.

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a haunting study of religious obsession, 29 Nov 2001

By A Customer

In this film a schizophrenic girl of deep religious conviction sinks into madness while her father, brother and husband look helplessly on. One of the film's great qualities is its lack of sentimentality in dealing with such a difficult subject, and its arresting and provocative imagery. Although less accessible than some of Bergman's other films, it includes one of the best performances in any of his works - that of Harriet Anderson. She is haunting and luminescent in the lead and makes you forgive any narrative shortcomings. Austerely shot by Sven Nykvist, a regular Bergman-collaborator, its images and intelligence pack a powerful punch

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning and powerful, 17 April 2006

By	David Welsh (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

One of Bergman's darkest films, and the first of a thematic trilogy exploring the question of the existence of God, Through A Glass Darkly depicts a young woman's descent into madness. The film is set at an isolated house on the coast and focuses on four characters: David, a writer, his adult children Karin and Minus, and his friend Martin - who is married to Karin. The idyll of the opening is quickly shattered as the tensions in their relationships and the extent of Karin's mental illness become more and more apparent. Bergman was not entirely happy with this film, and it has its imperfections, but it is more than redeemed by the performance of Harriet Andersson as Karin, which is the most stunning and powerful piece of acting I have ever seen on film.

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bergman's first step into peak modernism, 25 Oct 2001

By	hamishford@hotmail.com (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Through A Glass Darkly [VHS] [1961] (VHS Tape)

I think Bergman's very best period of work actually begins with 'Through a Glass Darkly'. Bergman is here honing his cinema to a point at which humanism starts to break down, and the spaces between people, and their view of themselves and reality, are undermined to an extent many people may not wish to persue in a film. Yet the work hits at difficults truths that are delivered in a form that can be described as difficultly beautiful.

Deep-focus images shot with a still camera offer endless shades of grey, with a light you can almost touch and smell. Dawn skies, rocky shorline, a pre-industrial house and four humans (who we first see like organisms emerging out of a primordial sea) is all that fills the screen. Here the 'chamber' quality of the setting allows Bergman to leave the expressionist mosaic style of direction he uses in 'The Seventh Seal' for a severe kind of image, rooted to the material world, yet open to invocations of metaphysical resonance.

Harriet Andersson plays a woman whose engagement with the world is beautiful in its heterogeneity. But her subjective focus is insufficient to master a cold world's requirements. She fails to sustain the neccessary control over her feelings, and attempts to stave off madness turn our badly (her religious hope turns to horror in the remarkable penultimate scene in the attic).

Meanwhile, this woman who might have been a microcosmic humanity's best hope, compares starkly to the well-meaning men, who seem to have adapted to a cold reality all too well. Her husband is as sterile as the needle he sticks in her arm to restore a 'normal' subjectivity (despite his verbal declarations of love), and her father has shown terrible signs of a very veritginous existential state. When his teenage son asks him what can be done to help his sister, the thesis offered comes across as an abject performance indeed, in the wake of all we have seen. Bergman regretted this coda to the film, yet the piety of the final words shall be truly worked through and subverted in the remaining films of Bergman's 'faith' trilogy. (The next installments are 'Winter Light' and 'The Silence'.)

One of Bergman's very best films, with 'Glass Darkly' You can see Bergman's remarkable ability to communicate almost universally resonant thematics, but with a growing formal austerity and percision. The film starts a decade of astonishing cinema (featuring the best film ever made in my opinion, 'Persona') of which there is no equal in the history of modernist filmmmaking. Absolutely essential viewing - and what's more, the DVD is coming soon.

Hamish Ford.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Mental breakdown
This is the 1st part of the the 1st trilogy Bergman did.The setting is Faro,an island
off Sweden. The sea is emphasised, the sky, the rocks, the shore, the elements. Read more

Published 5 months ago by technoguy

5.0 out of 5 stars Mad Sad and Bad
It's hard to know how to respond to this film purely, because you've got everyone going on about how good it is, and it's Bergman and it's this and it's that. Read more

Published 19 months ago by Jonathan Carr

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a first date movie
This is a difficult film which explores interesting but uncomfortable themes. The film depicts a young woman losing touch with reality and those around her through the development... Read more

Published on 2 Jan 2006 by the_muz

4.0 out of 5 stars I See A Darkness
Of all the actresses to star repeatedly under the direction of Bergman, Harriet Andersson arguably plays the greatest range. Read more

Published on 26 Jan 2003 by degrant

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