This is a noble attempt to shed light on a woman's inner struggle for existence. [02 Jul 2011, p.43]
Through a Glass Darkly(Såsom i en spegel)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Sweden · 1961
1h 31m
Director Ingmar Bergman
Starring Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Max von Sydow, Lars Passgård
Genre Drama
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After her stay in a mental hospital, Karin travels with her husband and family to a remote island, where they hope to reconnect. Instead, she begins to experience delusions that pull her further from reality. All the while, her father tries to use her illness for his novel and her brother struggles with his sexuality.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Bosley Crowther
It has a simple, straight cinematic form, unifying a little tangle of experience within a modest frame. It may strike one as slight and disappointing alongside the intellectual magnitude of such as his film "The Seventh Seal." But it suggests a new mood of its author—introspective, troubled, cold.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
A former mental patient and her family spend a summer on an isolated island, in a classic Bergman portrait where family dysfunction and existential terror meet. [31 Jul 2007, p.R1]
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
You can freeze almost any frame of this film and be looking at a striking still photograph. Nothing is done casually.
The New Republic by Stanley Kauffmann
For the eye and for the spirit, it is a study in varying shades of gray.
The New York Times by Walter Goodman
The acting is finely modulated; Miss Andersson's flirtation with insanity is a ballet. And the austere beauty of Sven Nykvist's photography has an eloquence all its own.
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