ABSTRACT
Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman, 1961) is set on an island, and its aquatic surroundings, during the time between two consecutive sunsets. Although some of the four characters in the film travel from or to places beyond this outside enclosure, these places are never actually seen, an aspect which further delimits the film’s other circumscribed spaces: the various rooms of an isolated house, boats and a stranded shipwreck. The significance of these enclosures is reinforced by the insistent framing of the liminal spaces between them. Images of window and door panes, half-open windows and doors, stairs and ladders, piers, the hatchway on the deck of the ship, and a dark opening in the wallpaper of an empty room, recur throughout the film, linking and separating the spaces on either side. By this means, Ingmar Bergman is not only able to project the idea of God in an invisible, or darkly seen, beyond, but also to convey the idea that his characters stand at critical junctures in their lives.
