For international audiences, Through a Glass Darkly arrived like a newly-minted coin in 1961. Bergman had turned his back on the abundant symbolism and exotic imagery of his '50s work, as though he had switched from symphonies to the rigor of a string quartet. The film contains only four characters. The action takes place in one 24-hour-time span. The environment: a bleak, deserted island with severe horizons and curious rock formations. The issues at stake: schizophrenia and the integrity of the artist.

This unfamiliar landscape stems from Bergman's fourth marriage to the Estonian pianist, Käbi Laretei (the film is dedicated to her in the opening credits, unique in Bergman's work). The pair moved from Stockholm to the remote island of Fårö in the Baltic Sea, and together embarked on a study of J.S. Bach's music. For the next ten years, Bergman's cinema would be increasingly ascetic and distilled.

It had occurred by chance. Bergman wanted to shoot Through a Glass Darkly on the Orkney islands to the north of Scotland. Svensk Filmindustri balked at the expense, and paid for a helicopter to seek an alternative location off the Swedish coast. In his autobiography The Magic Lantern, Bergman describes his first visit to Fårö: "In the film there is a stranded wreck. We swung rond a corner of a cliff, and there was the wreck, a Russian salmon cutter, just as I had described it. The old house was to be in a small garden containing ancient apple trees. We found the garden. We would build the hose. There was to be a stony shore. We found a stony shore facing infinity."

This film remains one of the most atmospheric and hypnotic of all his works. From the opening shots of smooth water, dissolving into a vision of all four characters wading ashore after an evening swim, there is a sense of anticipation and anxiety in the air. David (Gunnar Björnstrand), the father, is a novelist just returned from yet another trip abroad. His daughter, Karin (Harriet Andersson), suffers from "relatively incurable" schizophrenia, and her husband, Martin (Max von Sydow), tries ineffectually to care for her. Karin's younger brother, Minus (Lars Passgård), has aspirations to be an author too, but struggles awkwardly in the clutches of adolescence.

The screenplay maps out the areas of conflict with remarkable economy. David's self-absorption as a writer frustrates and angers the others. Karin and Minus fulfill an ambiguous relationship as sister and brother. Martin, a university lecturer, treats both his wife and his father-in-law with a condescension designed to cloak his own uncertainty. As Karin tells him, "You say the right things, do the right things, yet it's always wrong." Karin retreats further and further into her own fantasies, precipitating a dramatic conclusion to the film and shocking her relatives out of their complacent mindset.

While there is always something of Bergman in each of his characters, in Through a Glass Darkly it is David whose self-loathing and need for contact most closely resembles the director's. Like Bergman, David suffers from an incipient ulcer; he craves recognition as a great author (Bergman only turned to filmmaking after his youthful plays received poor notices). And also, David realizes his inadequacies as a father, bringing home last-minute presents to soften the blow of yet another overseas junket.

Sven Nykvist had joined Bergman's team in 1959, replacing his predecessor Gunnar Fischer's baroque, expresssionist style of cinematography with a spartan eye. In Through a Glass Darkly he revels in the gray tonality of the island and its enveloping waters. He captures the unique luminosity of the Nordic summer night, when the sun sets only at around 3 A.M. and rises one hour later.

Through a Glass Darkly forms the first part of a trilogy. Winter Light and The Silence pursue the same quest for enlightenment, the same discussion of God's nature whether pious or abstract. The title comes from the first epistle to the Corinthians: "For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known." In 1962, the film won the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film, the second successsive Oscar® for Bergman; The Virgin Spring had taken the same statuette in 1961.
-- PETER COWIE

Peter Cowie is Editor of the annual International Film Guide and author of Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography. He is International Publishing Director of Variety.

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