BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A friend seeks God on earth. I saw the Bergman Trilogy recently: through a Glass Darkly, The Silence, and Winter Light. Bergman sought the God that he thought he lost by engaging with families, as though it would be in the family that God might be found. The Trilogy deals with families. I doubt that Bergman found a God in those families.

He changed cameraman from Gunner Fisher to Sven Nykvist, and yet, although quite different, these films also have a photographic quality that engages the viewer. Fisher was more of a studio lighting expert and achieved stark expressionist scenes by manipulating the light in the studio--my favorites being the portrait of Death in Seventh Seal, and the greatest portrait in film, in Wild Strawberries, of the old professor on the brink of death, wistfully, sadly looking into a vision of his happy childhood with his parents fishing together at the edge of the sea.

But, the cameraman for the Triology, Sven Nykvist, worked almost strictly with natural light, and his outdoor scenes are marvelous and true.