Episode 197 – Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly

The boys of summer return to Bergman's most wintery period.

This time on the podcast, Scott Nye, David Blakeslee, Trevor Berrett, and Arik Devens discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly.

While vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family’s fragile ties are tested when daughter Karin (an astonishing Harriet Andersson) discovers her father (Gunnar Björnstrand) has been using her schizophrenia for his own literary ends. As she drifts in and out of lucidity, Karin’s father, her husband (Max von Sydow), and her younger brother (Lars Passgård) are unable to prevent her descent into the abyss of mental illness. Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Through a Glass Darkly, the first work in Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy on faith and its loss (to be followed by Winter Light and The Silence), presents an unflinching vision of a family’s near disintegration and a tortured psyche further taunted by the intangibility of God’s presence.

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Episode Links

Through a Glass Darkly – The Criterion Collection
Through a Glass Darkly (1961) – IMDb
Through a Glass Darkly (film) – Wikipedia
Through a Glass Darkly (1961) – #209 | Criterion Reflections
Ingmar Bergman: Through a Glass Darkly – The Mookse and the Gripes
Through a Glass Darkly – Ingmar Bergman Online Resource
Through a Glass Darkly: The Beginnings of Bergman’s Chamber Drama | Cinematheque

Episode Credits

Scott Nye (Twitter / Battleship Pretension)
David Blakeslee (Twitter / Criterion Reflections)
Trevor Berrett (Twitter / The Mookse and the Gripes)
Arik Devens (Twitter)