Product Description

Great Britain released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: Swedish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Production Notes, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: On an island, Karin, a recently released mentally sick young woman, is spending her vacation with her husband Martin, a doctor, her father David, a writer just back from Switzerland, and her younger brother Fredrick (Minus). Karin is suffering from hallucinations and hysteria. She thinks she is visited by God. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, Berlin International Film Festival, Oscar Academy Awards,

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #212187 in DVD
• Formats: Import, PAL, Subtitled
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

Features

• THIS DVD WILL NOT WORK ON STANDARD US DVD PLAYER

Customer Reviews

A powerful film, but get it as part of the Criterion Collection "chamber trilogy" box
Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film SASOM I EN SPEGEL (Through a Glass Darkly) was the first of his "chamber films" of the early '60s. These form a trilogy, all of intimate plots involving a minimum of characters and concerned with the "silence of God", Man's burden of surviving in life on his own with no clear direction from above. They intensify even further the existential angst of the late '50s films (DET SJUNDE INSEGLET, JUNGFRUKALLAN) but introduce the interpersonal themes that were to preoccupy Bergman for the rest of his career.

As the film opens, we see four people coming in from a swim in the cold Baltic Sea. The novelist David (Gunnar Bjornstrand) has returned home after a sabbatical in a distant country, reuniting at their summer home with his son Minus (Lars Passgard), daughter Karin (Harriet Andersson) and her husband Martin (Max von Sydow). Karin has suffered from some time from schizophrenia, though she had regained lucidity to a degree. Four characters is all it takes. The plot is driven through Karin's illness, Minus' awkward budding manhood, and David's self-centeredness and uninterest in his family's plight. Though wracked by delusions, Karin ultimately provides a key insight about Man's place in the world.

The superb quality of Andersson's acting can be judged by how uncomfortably close to home it hits this viewer, who had a loved one suffering from schizophrenia. This was the first Bergman film where Sven Nykvist was principal cinematographer, and there's a certain purity to the shots, as if they were sculpted from marble, compared to his later work. All in all, this is a powerful effort, though my favourite of the chamber trilogy is NATTVARDSGASTERNA (Winter Light).

This Amazon listing describes a standalone DVD of the film. However, I'd recommend getting SASOM I EN SPEGEL as part of the Criterion Collection box of Bergman's chamber trilogy.

INGMAR BERGMAN, OPUS 23
***** 1961. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. A prize in Berlin and Academy award in the Best Foreign Language Film category. A young woman, her husband, her brother and her father pass their vacation on a Swedish island. Karin is schizophrenic and, soon, suffers from hallucinations. This film marks a radical change in Bergman's cinematic language. One year only separates THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY from The Devil's Eye while the esthetics of these two motion pictures changes so essentially and dramatically thanks to a new photography director (Sven Nykvist), shootings on location (Farö island) and fewer characters on screen. Bach's cello suite, Harriet Andersson's performance and God's presence as a spider will shook you for life. Masterpiece.