SOURCE: Lacy, Allen. “The Unbelieving Priest: Unamuno's San Emmanuel the Good, Martyr and Bergman's Winter Light.” Literature/Film Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1982): 53-61.

In the following essay, Lacy compares Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr to Ingmar Bergman's 1961 film Winter Light.

Of its various kinds of “priests,” modern Western society has tended to think in terms that one might label either “Gnostic” or “Socratic.” Where a profession deals with knowledge of a religious, personal, or moral sort, non-professionals commonly expect that the practitioner will generally act on his knowledge, that right knowledge will lead to proper conduct. Thus the neurotic psychologist and the often-divorced marriage counselor are puzzling figures, but there is no need to account for the marriage counselor who takes his own advice or the healthy-minded psychologist.

But the most dramatically puzzling figure of this kind is surely the unbelieving priest, especially in the eyes of those who are...