One lonely Swedish beach house, four figuratively shipwrecked souls. There’s the schizophrenic daughter who thinks God talks to her from a closet and who has some interesting ideas about good sibling relations. There’s the man who’s somehow in love with her despite the bees in her brain. There’s the distant father. Lastly, there’s the son who’s down and out and high and dry with angst in his pants. The healthiest relationship in the bunch is also the most doomed. These people can’t even give each other gifts without bitter tears shed. It’s a sad story made powerful by the grace of its telling. Each character, each relationship, is a mess, but Ingmar Bergman’s direction is a model of clarity. In a story that sometimes turns on what the characters are not saying, Bergman and his actors never lose us. Their faces tell the story when words don’t. A lover of the long shot and the master shot (with great cinematographer Sven Nykvist on his side), Bergman also wants us to know the world around the characters. The shore, the rustic house, the overcast sky. He introduces his players as they casually walk toward us from afar. Other times, they walk away deep into the shot while the camera stands still. When Bergman moves in close, it’s for good reason. It’s a chord change in the film’s elegant chamber music. This is the first piece in what Bergman would later refer to as a thematic trilogy about the absence of God.