1963 ‘Tystnaden’ Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
El Silencio, Le Silence, Il Silenzio, Sessizlik, 침묵, Das Schweigen, Hiljaisuus, Il silenzio, El silencio, Mlčení, A csend, De Grote Stilte, Milczenie, Stilheden, Mlčanie, Молчание, 沉默, Η Σιωπή, O Silêncio
Sweden15
Germany18
USA
Denmark
FinlandK-16
USA
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Sweden
USA
”How nice that we can’t understand each other.”
The Silence was miles ahead of its own time and it belongs to the category of films which establish new aesthetic and thematic standards. Last film of Ingmar Bergman’s Faith trilogy deals with issues which are taboos even now, it must be one of the very first films which dared to dive into the controversial and –for some people-discomforting territory of sexuality and its precise dissection of matters like loneliness, human relationship and sexuality may be the reason why it is still a moving and challenging film.
There is a moment at the end of Through A Glass Darkly which I think is the key to any interpretation that one may have…
If “Glass Darkly” dealt with the absence of of God replaced with love, and “Winter Light,” the absence of God and love… “The Silence” seems to address absence itself.
The final part of Ingmar Bergman’s informal Faith Trilogy, “The Silence” depicts the division of two characteristically opposed sisters as they vie for affection.
With this work, it is not the lack of God that is most affecting, but rather lack of the director.
Bergman’s assured narrative hand is no doubt present in “Silence,” but its only ambition here seems to manipulate viewers farther and farther from any sort of truth. Bergman uses sexual excess and abstraction of tonality to isolate his audience as if they were searching for divinity in…
Action! - of God and Man: Bergman and the Hopelessness Kind
Bergman went on and took the movie title very seriously with this one. I was expecting a film about the “silence of God” (and to some extent I did), but the film takes its title beyond the metaphorical and embrace it in its entirety. By that I mean, while there’s some groaning and music and foley, the film as a whole plays almost like a silent film. The dialogue is very, very minimum.
There’s also probably the most nudity I’ve seen in a Bergman film to date, many of which represent this form of sexual repression. So, as it tends to be the case with Bergman, the silence doesn’t…
"It's all a matter of erections and secretions."
The concluding entry in Ingmar Bergman's early-'60s trilogy of faith—The Silence (Tystnaden)—is almost plotless by comparison to its predecessors. Bergman's screenplay centers around a lamentable trio of travelers who take up temporary residence within an airless hotel in an unfamiliar country seemingly poised on the brink of warfare. The principals are the unbalanced, concupiscent beauty Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), her neglected and thus clingy preteen son Johan (Jörgen Lindström), and her sickly, cerebral sister Ester (Ingrid Thulin).
As its title might indicate, there is significantly less dialogue in The Silence than in any other Bergman film I can recall. Thus the ostensible purpose of their travel remains somewhat ambiguous, but Anna kills much…
The Silence brings forth a great amount of silence when attempting to describe the film. It is above all a visualized masterwork, an experience through crystallized imagery and in my opinion the best cinematography that Sven Nykvist has ever done. It is also drastically different than many of Bergman's films so it is difficult to put into words of the uncategorized beast that this movie is.
Differing from Bergman's usual tropes is the fact that the film takes its title seriously and it contains the least amount of dialogue than in any other Bergman film that I have seen. This of course is part of the film's magic giving way for visual storytelling in replace for his usual monologues and…
body vs soul, sexuality vs spirit, physique vs psyche - Bergman's alienating abstract arthouse alien.
Constantly nuanced and allegorical, The Silence is a logic-defying film about lonely characters in a wordless world. It's not that God is silent in The Silence but that he is nowhere and theology is nonexistent. What is ever present however is sex and its emotional and moral ripples. The lead sisters in The Silence have an enigmatic relationship, and there's certainly a part of me that wonders if they represent the same person or if there's meant to be a sexual aspect to their relationship. It's all a bit Persona-ish. The Silence is mysterious and bizarre, an intimate gaze into a world of illogic which is as loud as our reality.
Decided to finish Bergman’s ‘Faith trilogy’. Simpler than the other two, and certainly not my favourite, but a very powerful watch nonetheless. Not the most complex, but everything seems to flow seamlessly. Haunting and isolating to the point of me feeling completely drained after watching. I can’t get over Sven Nykvist’s work behind the camera, and this is up there as maybe his best work I’ve seen yet. Some of the shots in this are truly remarkable. After just 8 films so far, Ingmar Bergman is already one of my all time favourite directors.
"They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." (Matthew 9:12)
Third part of the auteur's trilogy dealing with man's relationship with God, and the sickness has intensified. There's a stinking smell of imminent terror and destruction around the sisters sexually and emotionally disintegrating themselves. The pastor of Nattvardsgästerna (1961) had spoken to us about Guds tystnaden, "the silence of God". Now silence has engulfed everything and the air is impossible to breathe.
99/100
