ABSTRACT
In referring to The Silence, one movie critic wrote that "it is a symphony of despair, a harrowing harmony of unspoken anguish and the unheard lament of the loveless. And it is, perhaps, the most psychologically complex and symbol-laden of Ingmar Bergman's movies and one of his most demanding" while another pronounced it "the mature Bergman's masterpiece. Swedish literature is preoccupied with death and separation anxiety, best exemplified by the writings of August Strindberg and Par Lagerkvist. Bergman himself has been heavily influenced by the former, and, as the son of a Protestant minister, noted: A child who is born and brought up in a vicarage acquires an early familiarity with life and death behind the scenes. In summary, The Silence has been a studied utilizing psychoanalytic concept to depict the relationship of phobic and depressive symptomatology in Swedish culture to object loss and separation anxiety.
