Ingmar Bergman

Winter Light

Winter Light

“God, why hast thou forsaken me?” With Winter Light, Ingmar Bergman explores the search for redemption in a meaningless existence. Small-town pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation, including his stubbornly devoted lover, Märta (Ingrid Thulin). When he is asked to assuage a troubled parishioner’s (Max von Sydow) debilitating fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own doubt. The beautifully photographed Winter Light is an unsettling look at the human craving for personal validation in a world seemingly abandoned by God.

Film Info

  • Sweden
  • 1963
  • 81 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • Swedish
  • Spine #210

Special Features

  • On the DVD: High-definition digital transfer
  • On the Blu-ray: New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Introduction to the film by director Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003 (Blu-ray only)
  • Interview from 2003 with film scholar Peter Cowie
  • Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie, a five-part documentary by Vilgot Sjöman made for Swedish television during the production of Winter Light
  • With the DVD: An essay by Peter Cowie
  • Original U.S. theatrical trailer
  • Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack

Available In

Collector's Set

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman

Blu-ray Box Set

3 Discs

$79.96

Collector's Set

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman

A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$63.96

Collector's Set

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

Blu-ray Box Set

30 Discs

$239.96

Special Features

  • On the DVD: High-definition digital transfer
  • On the Blu-ray: New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Introduction to the film by director Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003 (Blu-ray only)
  • Interview from 2003 with film scholar Peter Cowie
  • Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie, a five-part documentary by Vilgot Sjöman made for Swedish television during the production of Winter Light
  • With the DVD: An essay by Peter Cowie
  • Original U.S. theatrical trailer
  • Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack
Winter Light
Cast
Gunnar Björnstrand
Tomas Ericsson
Ingrid Thulin
Märta Lundberg
Gunnel Lindblom
Karin Persson
Max von Sydow
Jonas Persson
Allan Edwall
Algot Frövik
Kolbjörn Knudsen
Knut Aronsson
Olof Thunberg
Fredrik Blom, organist
Elsa Ebbesen
Magdalena Ledfors
Eddie Axberg
Johan Strand
Credits
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Written by
Ingmar Bergman
Cinematographer
Sven Nykvist
Editor
Ulla Ryghe
Assistant director
Lenn Hjortzberg
Assistant director
Vilgot Sjöman
Art director
P. A. Lundgren
Production manager
Allan Ekelund
Sound
Stig Flodin
Sound
Brian Wikström
Sound effects
Evald Andersson
Costume design
Mago
Makeup
Börje Lundh
Unit manager
Lars-Owe Carlberg
Script continuity
Faragó Katinka

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Ingmar Bergman

Writer, Director

Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

The Swedish auteur began his artistic career in the theater but eventually navigated toward film—"the great adventure," as he called it—initially as a screenwriter and then as a director. Simply put, in the fifties and sixties, the name Ingmar Bergman was synonymous with European art cinema. Yet his incredible run of successes in that era—including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and The Virgin Spring, haunting black-and-white elegies on the nature of God and death—merely paved the way for a long and continuously dazzling career that would take him from the daring “Silence of God” trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) to the existential terrors of Cries and Whispers to the family epic Fanny and Alexander, with which he “retired” from the cinema. Bergman died in July 2007, leaving behind one of the richest bodies of work in the history of cinema.