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 is a subject that the cerebral Bergman is at his weakest in handling) Winter Light is simply one of the greatest Socratic dialogues ever put to film, and as close to perfect a screenplay as a mortal is likely to produce. The acting, in every single role, is pitch perfect, yet Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin gives one of the great dominant female performances in film history, as Märta Lundberg, an atheistic substitute school teacher in a small town with a now unrequited love for a Lutheran Pastor named Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), head of a church whose congregation has dwindled to a handful. The gorgeous Thulin is at her frumpiest and dowdiest looking in this film, and it seems that after an illness, she lost the affection of Tomas, with whom she had lived with for two years. Even Tomas does not believe any longer. His is a rote life, ever since the death of his wife four years earlier. He gives communion to a congregation that is bored- a boy licks the pews, others try to stay awake- including the church organist who checks his watch and reads, and the church hierarchy is dominated by money hungry apparatchiks, and Märta's swooning over Tomas is part of local gossip, which discomfits him. As he ends his noontime ceremony he is confronted by a fisherman, Jonas Persson (Max Von Sydow in a curly permanent wave) and his wife Karin (Gunnel Lindblom). The man is suffering from depression, ostensibly over the Chinese getting the atomic bomb. Of course, this is just a pretense, for we know Jonas is an unemployed fisherman, with three children and a fourth on the way, and even in the 1960s people were not so detached from reality to off themselves over an abstraction. Wisely, Bergman never reveals his true fears, as Tomas brushes him off and tells him to come back later, for a man to man talk. The Perssons leave, and then Tomas reads a letter Märta wrote him, confessing her love. It is a brilliant scene, shot with Thulin reading the words in two long takes, interspersed with a brief flashback. She addresses the camera so comfortably yet frankly that it puts the viewer in the place of Tomas, and we can later identify with his discomfit around this sincere, but needy and not altogether 'there' woman, who has suffered from a variety of ills which she feels had led Tomas to be repulsed by her. Yet, we are also drawn to her by the quiet brilliance with which she utterly guts religion with her atheistic views.
Bergman, apparently, has always stated that this was his only perfectly realized film, and while others may add to that number, there is no denying the excellence of this filmic masterwork, which shows that while Bergman had his roots in the theater, he also knew exactly how to use the filmic medium. The original Swedish title, as The Communicants, would seem to be better title for this film, which deals with connections and communications, and their fragility. While Through A Glass Darkly deals with people on an island, this aloneness is handled even more deftly here, where winter seems to be the defining metaphor- whether as the winter of religiosity or human kindness. Winter Light ranks with Wild Strawberries and Shame as one of Bergman's greatest works, which makes them essentials as films. It does not indulge in the technical masturbation of some later works, not does it rely too much on stagy overacting, as it deftly balances the inner and outer worlds of film and life. It is a truly great work of art.
Bergman, apparently, has always stated that this was his only perfectly realized film, and while others may add to that number, there is no denying the excellence of this filmic masterwork, which shows that while Bergman had his roots in the theater, he also knew exactly how to use the filmic medium. The original Swedish title, as The Communicants, would seem to be better title for this film, which deals with connections and communications, and their fragility. While Through A Glass Darkly deals with people on an island, this aloneness is handled even more deftly here, where winter seems to be the defining metaphor- whether as the winter of religiosity or human kindness. Winter Light ranks with Wild Strawberries and Shame as one of Bergman's greatest works, which makes them essentials as films. It does not indulge in the technical masturbation of some later works, not does it rely too much on stagy overacting, as it deftly balances the inner and outer worlds of film and life. It is a truly great work of art.