Through a Glass Darkly

Through a Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel, 1961) is Ingmar Bergman's chamber drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Four members of one family share a summer on a bare Swedish island, and over a single compressed stretch of days their fragile calm comes apart.

Karin has just left a psychiatric hospital and hopes the island will heal her, but the illness creeps back. She hears voices and waits for God to appear through a crack in the wallpaper. Her husband Martin loves her yet feels helpless and worn down. Her father David, a novelist, watches his daughter with a cold curiosity that hides a writer's urge to mine her breakdown for his next book. Her teenage brother Minus is caught between pity and his own awakening. Harriet Andersson plays Karin, with Gunnar Björnstrand as the father and Max von Sydow as the husband.

This is the opening film of Bergman's celebrated faith trilogy, and it took the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Sven Nykvist shoots the island in cold grey light, where the sea and the empty rooms press harder than any line of dialogue. It's a spare, unsparing study of God's silence and the selfishness lurking inside family love — built for viewers ready to sit with something slow and severe. Stream Through a Glass Darkly (1961) online on iFILM.