It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

The first part of Bergman's trilogy (followed by Winter Light) about God's silence. His deeply melancholic views on the human condition are reflected thru' this tale of four Swedes geographically isolated, in a summer home on a holiday island, and emotionally separated from each other in a society, rooted in Lutheran Protestanism, in which self-expression is taboo and feelings suppressed. As one of them descends into insanity the others can only gaze helplessly on. Much to be admired in Bergman' find out more...