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Winter Light

By Peter Cowie

Like Quattrocento Italian painting, Ming porcelain, or the late quartets of Beethoven,

Ingmar Bergmans chamber films are an acquired taste. Winter Lightrepresents the

Swedish directors most concentrated inquiry into the significance of religion, and of

Lutheranism specifically. Does it, can it, have any relevance in a world whereat least in

1962the nuclear threat hangs indiscriminately over mankind? Or where one individual

cannot show compassion to his lover?

Immaculately shot by Sven Nykvist, acted with extraordinary intensity by the entire

castand by Gunnar Bjrnstrand as Tomas Ericsson and Ingrid Thulin as Mrta

Lundberg in particularWinter Lightclasps us by the throat with numbed fingers and

demands a response. Gone is the baroque imagery, the grandiose dialogue of

Bergmans 1950s classics like The Seventh Sealand Wild Strawberries. Bergman, much

influenced at this period by his Estonian wife, the pianist Kbi Laretei, whittles down his

style to a level at which every word resonates with significance, every shot is unblinking,

and every performance is so authentic as to make us shift uncomfortably in our seats.

Bjrnstrand, playing the cowardly pastor, fell sick himself during the shooting and

managed to complete his role only under a doctors care, and beneath Bergmans

relentless gaze.

In 1959, Bergman told then-apprentice Vilgot Sjman during the production, my wife

and I went to say hello to the pastor who had married us. On the way, in the village

shop, we saw his wife talking very seriously to a schoolgirl. When we reached the

vicarage, the pastor told us that this little girls father had just committed suicide. The

pastor had had several conversations with him earlier, but to no avail. From such a

small incident Bergman weaves the texture of his tale, in which one mans suicide

induces a spiritual crisis for the local pastor and his mistress.

While preparing Winter Light, Bergman visited several churches in Uppland (just north

of Stockholm) and sat for an hour or two in each one, seeking inspiration for the close

of the film. One Sunday, he asked his father to accompany him. As they waited for a

Communion service to begin on a chill spring morning in one particular small church,

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the pastor declared that he was ill and could not preside over a full service. Bergmans

father hurried out to the vestry, and soon afterwards the Communion began, with

Pastor Erik Bergman assisting his sick colleague. Thus, recalls the director in his

autobiography, I was given the end ofWinter Lightand the codification of a rule I have

always followed and was to follow from then on: Irrespective of everything, you

willhold your Communion. It is important to the churchgoer, but even more important

to you.

Winter Lightunfolds in a rigorous time span of just a few hours, from Sunday morning

Communion in one church to the start of an afternoon service at another close by. Its

language and metaphors may be those of the established church, but it explores

human relationships with a candor that goes way beyond Christianity. Tomas is a pitiful

figure because he cannot choose between a worldly love (offered to him by the forlorn,

ailing Mrta) and the unattainable ideal implied in the religious dogma he intones before

the altar.

When the anxious fisherman, Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow), comes to him in the

vestry for reassurance, Tomas can do nothing but depress him still further. In baring his

own misgivings, in lamenting his own situation rather than comprehending the

fishermans, the doubting Tomas propels the man toward suicide. The pastor even

admits to Jonas that he does not himself believe in Gods existence, and when his

unfortunate parishioner has left the church, he turns to Mrta and says, with shocking

complacency, Now Im free.

Later, before the service at Frostns Church, it becomes clear through a superb

dialogue with his sideman, Algot Frvik (Allan Edwall), that Tomas resembles the

disciples who understood nothing during their three years in the company of Jesus,

and who deserted him in his hour of need.

Bergman takes more risks in this film than in any other, with the possible exception of

Persona(1966). Not only does he commit to it some of the most searing lines ever

written for the screen (for example, Tomas rejection of Mrta as they sit together in the

deserted schoolroom), but he shoots the picture with an uncompromising severity that

demands total concentration from the spectator. In the opening sequence, the camera

scrutinizes each churchgoer in close-up, and then from afar as they shuffle up to the

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altar rail for Communion; they appear frail, almost disjointed, like puppets on a string,

and in desperate need of comfort.

Ingrid Thulins reading of Mrtas letter to Tomas is an extraordinary scene; her face

seems to project every nuance of the words she is reciting and to express her

sentiments with a frankness beyond the reach of the evasive, shifty-eyed Tomas. Not

for nothing does the film title translate from the Swedish as The Communicants. For

Bergman, here, as so often elsewhere, the irony of life is peoples failure to

communicate with one another. When Tomas arrives at the riverside to attend the

corpse of Jonas Persson, the incessant boom of the nearby rapids drowns out the

conversation between the police and the pastor, as well as seeming to blur his

emotional response.

There are other subtleties, too. Tomas and his churchwardens address each other in the

third person, emphasizing the distance between them as well as the hierarchical

structure of orthodox religion. As the worshippers kneel before the altar for

Communion, they might as well be accepting medicine from a doctor as bread and

wine from the priest. (Later in the film, Mrta offers Tomas aspirin and cough mixture in

much the same way.)

Film buffs who know Bergmans earlier film Through a Glass Darkly will note the

organists scornful dismissal of that works conclusion: God is love; love is God. Indeed,

Winter Lightstands as a bridge between Through a Glass Darklyand The Silence, as well

as Bergmans farewell to his own religious upbringing. Some might call it an exorcism.

Peter Cowie is the author of more than twenty books on cinema, including biographies

of Ingmar Bergman and Francis Ford Coppola. His latest, Revolution! The Explosion of

World Cinema in the Sixties (Faber and Faber), will be published in 2004.