"Actor: Tor Borong"

• Winter Light | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The second of an Ingmar Bergman trilogy, 1962's Winter Light is a deliberate repudiation of the "God is love" message of its predecessor Through a Glass Darkly. Gunnar Bjornstrand stars as Tomas, a pastor in a remote parish tending to a dwindling congregation, as tense and distracted as David--the novelist Bjornstrand plays in Through a Glass Darkly. He finds himself trying to counsel a local fisherman Jonas, who is plagued by a sense of impending atomic doom but realises that the religious platitudes he consoles him with--"put your faith in the Lord"--are mere drivel. He himself is wracked by religious doubts, unable to tolerate "God's silence" and unable to prevent the fisherman from committing suicide. He finds himself taking out his inner woe on his eczema-riddled mistress, played by an unflatteringly made up Ingrid Thulin. Described by Bergman's own wife as a "dreary masterpiece", the synopsis to Winter Light seems almost comically miserable, yet this passion play is gripping in its unsparing bleakness, bathed in the stark illumination implied by the title, ironically akin to the light of a religious epiphany. Released at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, its preoccupations and all-pervasive anxieties are especially apt. On the DVD: Bergman's own notes reveal that Winter Lightis among his own favourites and he explains the evolution of the film's ideas at some length. Critic Philip Strick's background notes reveal that Gunnar Bjornstrand was exhausted and ill for much of the making of the film, which doubtless enhanced his anguished performance here. --David Stubbs

• The Virgin Spring | DVD | (28/10/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in 1960 and set in mediaeval Sweden, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring is based on a folk ballad. It also examines a society in transition from worshipping the old Norse gods to Christianity. The film starkly contrasts Ingeri--a dark, feral Odin-worshipping brunette, foster daughter to a Christian family headed by Max Von Sydow--and their own daughter, Karin, pretty and blonde but also vain and naive, and resented by Ingeri. They travel out together to a distant church where Karin is to offer votive candles to the Virgin Mary. However, en route, Karin is raped and murdered by two desperate goatherders, accompanied by a 13-year-old boy. By coincidence, the goatherders then seek refuge with Karin's parents and even try to sell them her clothes, which proves to be a mortal error. Bergman was greatly influenced by Kurosawa, the Japanese director of The Seven Samurai, when he made The Virgin Spring, as evinced in its ominous use of dark and shade and lengthy sequences without dialogue. However, this is more than pastiche. Although the Christian ending with which Bergman feels obliged to conclude the film doesn't quite sit well in a movie in which God is as palpably absent as in any Bergman movie, the slow, remorseless pace of the murder and subsequent retribution bring to mind Kieslowki's A Short Film About Killing in their sense of the futility of vengeance. On the DVD: The Virgin Spring arrives on disc in a restoration that vividly enhances the sense of light and shade which is integral to the movie. Notes from critic Phillip Strick provide background to the movie, including the legend on which the film was based, as well as observing that Bergman was later so embarrassed by the film's debt to Kurosawa that he disowned it, only to be told by Kurosawa himself not to be so silly. --David Stubbs

• To Joy | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of Ingmar Bergman's key early works - directed when he was just 30 years old - To Joy explores some of the themes that would come to chracterise many of his later films: the incompatibility of spouses and the responsibility of artists. Marta and Stig both play in an orchestra conducted by Sonderby. Their relationship is a happy one and they soon decide to get married and have children. However things begin to turn sour when Stig begins a sordid affair that threatens to dest