Through a Glass Darkly (1961) on Netflix
Karin, out of a mental hospital, spends the summer with her family on a small island. Martin, her husband, learns her illness is likely incurable. Minus longs for their father David's affection.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Karin returns from a mental hospital to her family's cottage on a small island, hoping the summer will help her recover. Her husband Martin, a doctor, learns from her physician that her schizophrenia is most likely incurable. Her father David, a novelist, has just come back from Switzerland, where he finished a book, and plans to leave again in a month despite his promise to stay. Karin's seventeen-year-old brother Minus feels unloved by David and wishes he could talk to him. The family performs a play Minus wrote for David, who hides his hurt at its message. That night Karin hears voices from behind the wallpaper in an abandoned upstairs room, and her hold on reality begins to slip.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Harriet Andersson first turned down the role of Karin in Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly, saying it would be too challenging; Bergman shot back, "Don't give me that load of shit!" She then prepared by contacting a nurse to discuss schizophrenia.
- The character of Karin was inspired by a woman Ingmar Bergman had lived with when he was younger, who he said heard voices telling her to do things.
- Through a Glass Darkly won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Ingmar Bergman's second win in a row after The Virgin Spring, and Harriet Andersson accepted the Oscar on his behalf.
- David's account of driving over a cliff to kill himself drew on Ingmar Bergman's own suicide attempt in Switzerland before he made Smiles of a Summer Night in 1955.
- Through a Glass Darkly was Ingmar Bergman's first film shot on the island of Fårö, chosen on cinematographer Sven Nykvist's recommendation; Bergman went on to shoot several more films there.
- Bergman called Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence a trilogy dealing with reduction, saying the first was about "conquered certainty", and later retracted his claim that the three formed a trilogy.
- Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist planned Through a Glass Darkly as their first colour film together, but abandoned the idea after disliking the look of the colour shots they tested.
