About

In 'The Silence', Sven [Nykvist] and I had decided to be uninhibitedly unchaste. It contains a cinematic sensuality that I still experience with delight.

The Silence will screen from an archival 35mm film print.

The film is the final entry in Bergman's loose thematic 'Faith Trilogy', with each film acting as a different meditation on the notion of the silence of God.

The Silence finds two sisters – the elder, Ester (Ingrid Thulin), serious-minded and stricken by illness, and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), younger and more sensuous – travelling with Anna's young son Johan. During a stopover at a hotel in a fictional European country teetering on the brink of war, tensions begin to simmer over between the sisters. Anna finds Ester's illness burdensome and begins to attack her sister by means of her carnality. The film finds Bergman at his dreamiest. It is a surreal exploration of humanity, spirituality and sexuality that follows no strict logic – nevertheless, it still finds revelation in its intimate flow.

While Bergman would later be more hesitant in his categorisation of the three films – Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence - as a thematic trilogy, he once spoke of them as such: "these three films deal with reduction. Through a Glass Darkly – conquered certainty. Winter Light – penetrated certainty. The Silence – God's silence – the negative imprint. Therefore, they constitute a trilogy." Of the films within the 'Faith Trilogy', The Silence is the least explicitly religious in content. And yet this absence of directness is in many ways how it justifies its inclusion. Here, God's silence has taken hold – and now the characters must live in that world.

R18+ | Restricted to adults

R18+