'The Communicants') is a 1963 Swedish drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring his regulars, Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow.

Vilgot Sjöman's film Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie was made simultaneously with Winter Light and documents its production.

No sooner have the Perssons left than substitute teacher Märta enters, and she attempts to comfort the miserable Tomas, and asks if he's read the letter she wrote to him.

In the letter, Märta describes Tomas's neglect of her, relating a story of how a rash that disfigured her body repulsed him, and neither his faith nor his prayers did anything to help her.

When that fails to deter her affections, Tomas then tells her that he was tired of her problems, her attempts to care for him, and her constant talking, and that Märta could never measure up to his late wife, the only woman he has ever loved.

Arriving for the three o'clock service at the second church, Tomas and Märta find the building empty except for Algot, the handicapped sexton, and Fredrik, the organist.

Algot wonders why so much emphasis was placed on the physical suffering of Jesus, which was brief in comparison to the many betrayals he faced from his disciples, who denied his messages and commands, and finally from God, who did not answer him on the cross.

Meanwhile, Fredrik tells Märta that she should leave the small town and Tomas and live her life, rather than stay and have her dreams crushed like the rest of them, but she chooses to start praying.

[6] Bergman stated he abandoned the idea that love is proof of God because it was unsatisfactory to explain to a character who was suicidal over fear of nuclear war.

[7] The character Blom mocks the idea of God as love, attributing the words to Tomas but quoting the end of Through a Glass Darkly exactly.

[9] In contrast, the character Algot, presented as enlightened, equates Tomas's spiritual crisis with sayings of Jesus on the cross and God's "silence".

[11] In Bergman's view, Winter Light represents the end of his study on whether God exists, after which human love became his main concern.

[11] Director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman was inspired to make the film after talking to a clergyman, who related how he had offered spiritual advice to a fisherman who later killed himself.

[12] The idea of the character becoming depressed over fear of China and weapons of mass destruction was based on an article Bergman himself had read, and he acknowledged it reflected his own dread.

[13] He completed the screenplay on 11 August 1961, at which point Vilgot Sjöman began filming the documentary Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie chronicling the production.

[18] Cinematographer Sven Nykvist spent one month studying lighting in the church at different times of day and in different conditions, conducting photography tests.

[28] Vilgot Sjöman's interviews with audience members at the Swedish premiere indicated viewers thought it was a masterpiece, that the performances were realistic, and Bergman's struggles with faith were relevant to everyone.

[30] On 19 August 2003, The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD in Region 1, in a boxset with Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence and Sjöman's documentary Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie.

[12] Judith Crist of the New York Herald Tribune wrote that the work "casts a gloom-tinged glare upon the human condition with chilling clarity", but found the film "bleak and cold in its abstract ideas".

[36] Susan Sontag, in her famous essay "Against Interpretation" first published in December 1964 in the Evergreen Review, dismissed the "callow pseudo-intellectuality of the story and some of the dialogue" in Winter Light, but praised "the beauty and visual sophistication of the images".

[37] In 2007, Roger Ebert added Winter Light to his Great Movies list, citing the film's "bleak, courageous power" and echoing Sontag's praise of its visual style as "one of rigorous simplicity".