Ingmar Bergman

The Silence

The Silence

Two sisters—the sickly, intellectual Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and the sensual, pragmatic Anna (Gunnel Lindblom)—travel by train with Anna’s young son, Johan (Jörgen Lindström), to a foreign country that appears to be on the brink of war. Attempting to cope with their alien surroundings, each sister is left to her own vices while they vie for Johan’s affection, and in so doing sabotage what little remains of their relationship. Regarded as one of the most sexually provocative films of its day, Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence offers a disturbing vision of emotional isolation in a suffocating spiritual void.

Film Info

  • Sweden
  • 1963
  • 95 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • Swedish
  • Spine #211

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
  • Poster gallery for the films of the trilogy
  • With the DVD: Essay by film scholar Leo Braudy
  • 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
  • Poster gallery for the films of the trilogy
  • With the DVD: Essay by film scholar Leo Braudy
  • Original U.S. theatrical trailer
  • Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack
The Silence
Cast
Ingrid Thulin
Ester
Gunnel Lindblom
Anna
Jörgen Lindström
Johan
Birger Malmsten
Bartender
Håkan Jahnberg
Hotel waiter
Eduardo Gutiérrez and The Eduardinis
The little people
Credits
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Written by
Ingmar Bergman
Cinematographer
Sven Nykvist
Editor
Ulla Ryghe
Assistant director
Lenn Hjortzberg
Assistant director
Lars-Erik Liedholm
Art director
P. A. Lundgren
Production manager
Allan Ekelund
Music composed by
Johann Sebastian Bach
Music composed by
Robert Mersey
Music composed by
Ivan Renliden
Sound
Stig Flodin
Sound
Bo Leverén
Sound
Tage Sjöborg
Mixing
Olle Jakobsson
Costume
Marik Vos-Lundh
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.