--- title: "Winter Light" year: 1963 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/winter-light" fi1m_id: "winter-light" imdb_id: "tt0057358" tmdb_id: 29455 wikidata_id: "Q842067" fi1m_score: 88 critics_score: 72 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-26T15:24:38.987961+00:00" updated: "2026-09-26T15:24:39.961509+00:00" region: "HU" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Winter Light (1963) Directed by Ingmar Bergman · 1h 20m · Drama ## Identity Winter Light - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/winter-light - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** winter-light - **IMDb ID:** tt0057358 - **TMDB ID:** 29455 - **Wikidata ID:** Q842067 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057358/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/29455, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q842067 **Fi1m score: 88** · Critics 72 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* A pastor with a cold admits between noon service and three o’clock that he has no faith, then takes the three o’clock anyway > Ingmar Bergman’s eighty minutes in two cold Swedish churches is the plainest film he made and one of his best. Björnstrand and Thulin are extraordinary; if a doubting pastor in flat grey light is not your evening, nothing here will try to persuade you. ## Synopsis One Sunday in winter, in a country church in rural Sweden, Pastor Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand) takes the noon communion for a handful of parishioners. He has a heavy cold, a dead wife and no faith left in what he is saying. In the pews are Märta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin), who loves him and is not loved back, and Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow) with his wife Karin (Gunnel Lindblom). After the service Karin brings Jonas to the vestry: something he has read in the newspaper has left him unable to sleep for dread, and she cannot reach him. Tomas asks him to come back alone. Märta hands Tomas a letter. And before the afternoon is out he must drive through the snow to take a second service in another church. ## Review Ingmar Bergman’s *Winter Light* runs 80 minutes and covers about three hours of one Sunday, between the noon service in one Swedish country church and the three o’clock in another. Nothing in it is decorated. A pastor who has stopped believing tries to comfort a frightened man, fails to love a woman who loves him, and drives through the snow to his next service. It is the plainest film Bergman made, and we think it is among his best, which is a higher opinion than most of the reviews we have read will allow it. Gunnar Björnstrand had been Bergman’s squire in [*The Seventh Seal*](https://film.one/film/the-seventh-seal) (1957), a man who enjoyed his own disbelief. Tomas Ericsson gets no enjoyment from his. Björnstrand plays him with a streaming cold, sniffing and wiping his nose at the altar rail, and the cold makes the loss of faith physical in a way no speech could. In the vestry with Jonas Persson, Tomas is meant to be listening. Instead he starts talking about himself, his wife, the god he built to keep himself comfortable, and Björnstrand lets us see the pastor realise, a beat too late, what he has done to the man in front of him. Max von Sydow, the knight from the same film, has perhaps a dozen lines as Jonas and does most of the work sitting still, a big man folded into a small chair, frightened by a newspaper. Gunnel Lindblom’s Karin does his talking for him, and you can see how long she has been doing it. Then there is Ingrid Thulin. Märta writes Tomas a letter, and rather than have him read it Bergman puts Thulin in front of the camera and has her say it straight to us, unbroken, for several minutes. We felt caught out. The letter is about her eczema and her unbelief and how much she wants him; it was not written to us, and by the end we could not look away and were slightly ashamed of watching. She carries it without a cut. Sven Nykvist shoots it in a light with almost no shadows in it. It comes grey through the high windows and lies flat on the whitewashed walls and the faces, and it does not change from the first frame to the last, so the day never seems to move even as the clock does. P.A. Lundgren gives the two churches bare wood, white plaster and a painted Christ, and the vestry a desk, a stove and a window onto the snow; there is nothing for the eye to rest on but people. Max Goldstein’s costumes are cassocks, overcoats and a cardigan. Ulla Ryghe cuts as little as she can get away with, holding on a face after the line has finished, and a good deal happens in those held seconds. Evald Andersson has the credit for music and the film has almost none: the organ, the congregation singing thinly, bells across the snow, and otherwise the sound of a cold room. In the second church the film gives its warmest minutes to Allan Edwall as Algot Frövik, a small bent man who has been reading about the Passion and has a question for the pastor about what Christ actually suffered. Edwall plays him with a shy pleasure in having thought of something, and his few minutes contain more theology than Tomas manages all day. The last scene moved us more than we expected a church service to. We will not describe it. This is usually filed as the middle of Bergman’s trilogy about God’s silence, between [*Through a Glass Darkly*](https://film.one/film/through-a-glass-darkly) (1961) and *The Silence* (1963), and treated as the hard one, to be respected rather than liked. That is where the reviews we have read part from us. Austere it is; cold it is not. Every scene is about somebody trying to reach somebody else, a wife for her husband, a woman for a priest, an old man for a pastor who will not look at him, and the film cares about each of them more than it cares about God. It is not for a Friday night with company. It is for a grey afternoon when the light has gone early and you are prepared to sit still, and if that is your evening we would put it ahead of nearly everything else Bergman made. Eighty minutes. Bring a jumper. *Fi1m score 88, published 26 September 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Winter Light worth watching?** *Winter Light* is worth watching for anyone prepared to sit still through eighty minutes of a doubting pastor in flat grey light, and we scored it 88. Gunnar Björnstrand and Ingrid Thulin are extraordinary, and the film is warmer than its reputation suggests, but it is for a quiet afternoon alone rather than a Friday night with company. **How long is Winter Light, and what is it rated?** *Winter Light* runs 1h 20m. It is a drama film. **Where can I watch Winter Light in Hungary?** *Winter Light* is not on any streaming or rental service in Hungary at the moment. It is available in 5 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does Winter Light compare to Diary of a Country Priest?** *Winter Light* is the plainer and, we think, the warmer of the two, while [*Diary of a Country Priest*](https://film.one/film/diary-of-a-country-priest) is the more severe. Bergman's pastor seems to be answering Bresson's sickly young curé, and both films are about a priest's isolation, but Bresson's solemnity makes his lonely man harder company than he needs to be. Start with Bergman unless you already know you want austerity. **What should I watch after Winter Light?** After *Winter Light*, try [*Diary of a Country Priest*](https://film.one/film/diary-of-a-country-priest) (1951, Fi1m 84): Bresson’s sickly young curé, the film Bergman’s pastor seems to be answering. Then [*Ordet*](https://film.one/film/ordet) (1955, Fi1m 86): Dreyer on Danish farm faith, slower still, and it goes where Bergman refuses to; and [*First Reformed*](https://film.one/film/first-reformed) (2017, Fi1m 86): Schrader borrows the doubting pastor, the letter and the dread, then adds a fuse. ### Reviews we read (5) - **Slant Magazine**, Keith Uhlich (4/4): Uhlich praises the film as a brilliant, profound pitch-black comedy that finds human goodness within faith and love. He especially singles out Ingrid Thulin’s fourth-wall-breaking monologue for its escalating comic force. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/winter-light/) - **Film Comment**, Molly Haskell (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the pair as daunting but finds them strangely exhilarating. The visible text singles out their challenging nature, but gives no specific element of either film. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/seeing-double-bad-timing-winter-light/) - **Time Out**, DT (65/100, inferred): The available page presents it as the austere middle entry in Bergman’s trilogy about God’s silence, but provides no explicit overall verdict. It singles out the film’s austere focus on divine silence. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/nattvardsgaesterna) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (64/100, inferred): The archive headline identifies this as a review, but its text was unavailable. The critic’s verdict and any specific praise or complaint cannot be verified. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1963/05/14/archives/screen-winter-light-by-bergmantale-of-country-pastor-challenges.html) - **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (3/5): Parkinson calls the film a powerful, pessimistic exploration of humanity’s relationship with God. He singles out its close-up composition as contributing to that impact. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-vswjyw/winter-light/) ## Details - **Director:** Ingmar Bergman - **Director:** Ingmar Bergman - **Writer:** Ingmar Bergman - **Cinematography:** Sven Nykvist - **Editor:** Ulla Ryghe - **Music:** Evald Andersson - **Production design:** P.A. Lundgren - **Costume design:** Max Goldstein - **Producer:** Allan Ekelund - **Cast:** Ingrid Thulin as Märta Lundberg; Gunnar Björnstrand as Tomas Ericsson; Gunnel Lindblom as Karin Persson; Max von Sydow as Jonas Persson; Allan Edwall as Algot Frövik; Kolbjörn Knudsen as Knut Aronsson; Olof Thunberg as Fredrik Blom; Elsa Ebbesen as Magdalena Ledfors - **Runtime:** 1h 20m - **First release (Sweden):** 9 February 1963 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in Hungary Not streaming, renting or buying in Hungary at the last check. Also available in: FI, GB, IT, SE, TR. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Diary of a Country Priest* (1951), Fi1m 84: Bresson’s sickly young curé, the film Bergman’s pastor seems to be answering. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/diary-of-a-country-priest.md) - *Ordet* (1955), Fi1m 86: Dreyer on Danish farm faith, slower still, and it goes where Bergman refuses to. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ordet.md) - *First Reformed* (2017), Fi1m 86: Schrader borrows the doubting pastor, the letter and the dread, then adds a fuse. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/first-reformed.md) - *Calvary* (2014), Fi1m 81: A good Irish priest given a week to live; funnier, angrier, same cold church. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/calvary.md) - *Ida* (2013), Fi1m 85: A novice nun in 1960s Poland, shot in grey light with nothing wasted. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ida.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/winter-light