Existential Feelings in the Cinema of Ingmar Bergman

In this article I propose that films typically described as existential are not only concerned with classical existential themes – alienation or anxiety, solitude and despair – but with affective states that Matthew Ratcliffe calls “existential feelings” or “feelings of being.” These terms designate various bodily feelings – the bodily feeling of being, of existence, of belonging - that express a relationship towards the world understood as a space of possibilities. To explore this idea, I turn to a discussion of Ingmar Bergman's Silence of God trilogy, comprising Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963), and explore negative existential feelings that underlie more familiar existential moods or emotions such as anxiety or dread. This consideration of the important role of existential feelings in the work of a canonical existentialist auteur opens new ways of understanding existential moods in contemporary cinema.