Through a Glass Darkly [Såsom I En Spegel] **** (1961, Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow, Lars Passgård) – Classic Movie Review 4838

Writer/ director Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 typically angst-torn Swedish saga of four unhappy people on a far-off island won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was Sweden’s second consecutive win after Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960).

The first in Bergman’s trilogy (with Winter Light (1963) and Persona (1966) to follow) exploring empty lives is difficult but rewarding to watch, thanks to Sven Nykvist’s striking cinematography and the startling performances of some of the finest of Bergman’s repertory company of great actors.

It has a cast of only four. Harriet Andersson plays Karin, the unstable woman freed from a sanatorium having to cope with not only her own illness but the reactions of her aloof novelist father (Gunnar Björnstrand), careworn husband Martin (Max von Sydow) and odd, misogynist brother Fredrik (Lars Passgård, in his debut).

It is the first of Bergman’s films shot on the island of Fårö, where he later bought a home. Bergman was an admirer of his own film: ‘The film is above reproach technically and dramatically.’ Through a Glass Darkly comes from a passage by Paul in The First Epistle to the Corinthians.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4838

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