In the Ingmar Bergman film Winter Light (1962), Gunnar Bjornstrand and Ingrid Thulin are thespians of the first order.  Bjornstrand is never false and always perfect in his timing as a suffering minister, Tomas Ericsson, who still grieves over the death of his cherished wife.  Thulin plays his former mistress who will never win Tomas’s love.  Put forward here is the concept of minister as nonbeliever, a man without faith.  “God’s silence” disturbs him, but at the end he carries on with the hope that what Bergman adverted to as an answer from God will blessedly arrive.  It may be that Tomas will stop surprising his ex-lover with the odd “indifference to Jesus Christ” which she says the reverend’s personality is marked by.

I believe most of Bergman’s films are failures, but Winter Light, albeit not flawless, succeeds.  Typically it is directorially outstanding.  Consider the naturalistic sequence outdoors, after a man has committed suicide, when wind-blown snow and the noisy rapids point to nature’s inexorable power and fascination.  Consider the captivating scene where Tomas’s car is at a railroad crossing.  The film is serious without being great, exquisite without being a masterpiece.

(In Swedish with English subtitles)

A terrific film noir produced in China, So Close to Paradise was made in the late Nineties, banned for three years by the Red government, and—hooray!—subsequently released in the U.S.  It didn’t make me think of Forties and Fifties Hollywood, though, but rather of the lofty Euro film of Antonioni and lesser artists, what with its angst, its silence and its careful visuals.  The “music” of the picture are the sounds of a tugboat, heavy rain, high heels on pavement and—well, sober tones.  Lamentably, serious cutting was done by the Chinese studio, but filmmaker Wang Xiaoshunai‘s talent still shines through.  The thin plot is quite digestible, and actress Wang Tong is lovely as she credibly plays a worldly nightclub singer.

A character called Gao Ping (Guo Tao), a man of greed and lust, is one of the film’s three losers.  The other two are Gao’s young pal Dongzai and Wang’s nightclub singer, Ruan Hong.  After his partner-in-crime makes off with Gao’s stolen money, Gao tracks down Ruan because she knows where the jerk can be found.  In fact he has to abduct her, and he rapes her.  Amazingly, the two become a couple (don’t tell the feminists).  Thereafter there is trouble.  Angst.  Also, however, the plot loses its hold on us (it did on me).  Only the technical sophistication begins to matter, but so be it.  I still had a good time with So Close to Paradise.