15 Thematic Trilogies From 15 Directors

Ingmar Bergman’s Religion/Faith trilogy: “Through a Glass Darkly” (1961)/ “The Winter Light” (1962)/“The Silence” (1963)
If Ingmar Bergman were more a provocateur, he could have labeled these three early-‘60s films the Sex and Death Trilogy, as while they do deal in faith and its numerous challenges, certainly the final installment “The Silence” directs the viewer more towards crises of mortality and sexual need in God’s absence. Bergman’s 1963 film is a chronicle of two sisters, Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindbloom), as they travel—deprived of obedience to any sort of higher power—to a once-glamorous hotel in a an unnamed European country on the brink of war. Unlike “Through a Glass Darkly” and “The Winter Light,” “The Silence” frees its characters of any and every inhibition. Incest, asphyxiation, lesbianism, and a rather inexplicable theatre troupe of little people all make an appearance (perhaps Bergman had just seen the Fellini trilogy), and it leads to one of the director’s most explicit and horrific films.

So “The Silence” rounds out the trilogy as the best of the lot, but the first two are still solid chamber dramas of their own, and are in fact better suited to one another thematically. “Through a Glass Darkly” charts a dysfunctional family’s breakdown, and “The Winter Light” concerns a priest trying to calm a series of anguished visitors, like a fisherman (Max von Sydow) worried about the possibility of nuclear war. Stripped down, the films came out of the crisis of faith that Bergman was battling at the time, and specifically focus on lack of communication and spiritual isolation. Just take a look at their settings: on an island in the forest in the first and during the white void of winter in the second.

Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy: “Repulsion” (1965)/”Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)/”The Tenant” (1976)
The first order of business in all three films of Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy is a keen sense of place. Armed with bigger budgets than 1965’s “Repulsion,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Tenant” open with extended helicopter and crane shots showing every inch of the apartments where we’ll be spending the next few hours. Geography holds the key to Polanski’s masterful focus on paranoia, claustrophobia, and seclusion: in the dresser blocking a closet—why was it misplaced?—or the incessantly squeaky floorboards that turn the neighbors of Polanski’s protagonist in “The Tenant” against him.

A slow, psychological unraveling results, and “Rosemary’s Baby” remains the most effective in its aims, proving a legendary success story for Paramount exec Robert Evans, producer William Castle, actress Mia Farrow, and of course the wunderkind Polanski making his stateside debut. It also sticks the slowly mounting tension and final release much more powerfully than “The Tenant,” which takes a relatable premise and rides it to overly ludicrous heights. For a better portrait of a lonely figure slowly driven mad, “Repulsion” remains the ticket, boasting a committed performance by Catherine Deneuve, and also an obsessively detailed soundtrack full of ticking clocks and beating hearts.

Wim Wenders’ Road Movie Trilogy: “Alice in the Cities” (1974)/”The Wrong Move” (1975)/”Kings of the Road” (1976)
Wim Wenders is a director defined by crisis of identity: half rooted in the cultural turmoil of post-WWII Germany, and half in America, celebrating the source of much of his filmic inspiration as he had discovered it growing up in Düsseldorf. His Road Movie Trilogy takes that wandering individuality and explores it on the streets and highways of Germany, all while using the genre most linked to mini-studio BBS’ output and other ‘60s and ‘70s American cinema. Much like Bergman or Polanski’s work around the period, remote personalities occupy the films, such as when Philip, the journalist at the center of “Alice in the Cities,” is forced to take care of a young girl after her mother fails to show in Amsterdam. He’s even against taking care of the child, giving her over to the police, but he’s eventually drawn back to her through reflection using an American touchpoint–“Memphis” performed by Chuck Berry.

For Wenders’ second installment, “The Wrong Move,” he borrows Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s muse Hanna Schygulla to play another searching writer’s travel companion. But while the director admitted to not using her effectively, he did strike gold by casting a 13-year-old Nastassja Kinski, who plays the mute companion of a homeless man previously in WWII concentration camps as a German Captain. “Kings of the Road,” a three-hour car journey down the divide of the two German halves, is the closest Wenders comes to a “buddy movie” experience, following a theatre projector repairman and a man named “Kamikaze” who bond over rock n’ roll and cinema. Naturally, while the pace is more languorous than one would expect from the genre, the references to Nicholas Ray and Edward Hopper come fast and furious, along with subtle remembrances of Wender’s Germany.