Black and White Equals Gray

Abstract

Ingmar Bergman’s Nattvardsgasterna/Winter Light (SE, 1963) was his favorite among the movies he made. It would be easy to dismiss such a statement as merely an impulsive remark were it not for two things: First, Bergman was not given to impulsive remarks about serious subjects such as film, and especially his own films. Second, Winter Light is unique among his body of film-works, so the statement makes sense when judged from the qualities of the film itself. It is an archetypal Bergman work, starkly simple in structure and profoundly complex in content. Th e film draws us into its black and white—in this work we should say black versus white—world to create an alternative reality that is both familiar and new. Th e Swedish title of Winter Light translates into English, the lingua franca of international film distribution, as Th e Communicants. Not a bad title at all, given the film’s story. So, where does the title Winter Light come from? Was Bergman consulted? Or was it the choice of the distributor’s marketing department? Either way, it was a brilliant choice, because the narrative is about the particular light of Swedish winter—flat and colorless—which is powerfully emblematic of the protagonists’ states of mind as they confront themselves and each other. For all their intensity and emotional displays, the color of the local landscape dominates their behavior. Th at color is gray—sometimes light-washed and transparent, sometimes dark and too deep to fathom. Th ese extremes are both present in a still from the scene about halfway through the movie where Tomas, the troubled and doubting pastor, comes into his church’s sanctuary aft er being badly shaken by a conversation with his parishioner, Jonas.