But the entire film is in red, everywhere you turn.
It’s all very real. The fantasy you speak of is altered memory.
The silent opening, Agnes (Harriet Andersson) in her sickbed and a new day begins. Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) come to be at her side. Maria — spoiled brat, vain and self-absorbed. Karin — in a bad marriage, full of rage. Anna (Kari Sylwan), the plump, selfless (one could say, too selfless) housekeeper, tending to Agnes with a love that is both tender and passionate.
This is Bergman with his women again: the male invisible in the next room, listening. The cries (Agnes’s pain) are often wrenching, but Karin’s self-inflicted wound seemed more sensational than motivated. The performaces, exceptional: Ullmann as the chiseled, cold, empty beauty; Thulin simply overpowering (saying to Maria toward the end: “Do you know how much I hate you?”)
A great film.
By “red appears filling the screen” I meant the times when it is a close up on a character’s face and the whole screen becomes red. So is it fully accepted that the film other than the scene where she returns from the dead actually happened? I felt on first viewing that the glass scene and some of the exchanges between the two sisters didn’t really happen. Ya it was amazing.
Sorry double post.
“Fade to Red” would clarify that one Drew.
I just absolutely love this one. I will never forget the scene with the cries and screaming and the gasping breathing that seems to go on forever. This is one of Bergman’s greatest works. The meaning of the red color is well documented in the special features on the disc and should be pretty easy to find as it’s one of the more blatant symbols. Being that I just worked 19 hours in a row and am kind of fuzzy-headed, I just can’t recall right now. Google it. It’s not hard.
God I love this movie. I’m gonna watch this one again tomorrow…or when I wake up.
I’m not a fan of this film. I saw it as part of a massive Bergman retrospective a few years back, and was just not involved in any way. Yeah, yeah, the red and all that. I was bored senseless. The big mutilation scene just left me clueless, I found myself wondering why the woman’s husband didn’t take one look at his wife, with her own vaginal blood smeared all over her face and have her shipped to the nearest asylum. It just seemed like a desperate measure on Bergman’s part to come up with something shocking. I didn’t buy it for a minute.
I even found myself laughing most inappropriately during the big dinner scene between the two sisters, when one of them tells the other, “I’ve always hated you!!!!!” with maximum face-twitching intensity: it just reminded me of a Carol Burnett parody.
That said, I like a lot of Bergman very much. FANNY AND ALEXANDER is one of my favorite works of art of all time. But CRIES AND WHISPERS? No, thanks. I’ll revisit it at some point, I guess.
I couldn’t disagree with Roscoe more. This, to me, is Bergman’s best two or three films (up there with Winter Light, and Wild Strawberries). Specifically because of Harriet Andersson. I’ve watched someone die, and that’s exactly what it’s like. The first time I watched it it was only a couple months after I’d seen someone die (from cancer), and the film was too intense, I couldn’t get through it because it’s was just too much. Tears were streaming down my face, and I was absolutely destroyed emotionally by the film.
Liv Ullmann, and Ingrid Thulin performances are perfect, too. I think they genuinely feel for their sister, but are too caught up in their own lives to show it. This is absolutely real, too. Everything in the film is exactly what it is like to watch someone die, it’s horrifying. A perfect film.
one of my favorite Bergman movies as well.
Ingrid Thulin scares the crap out of me. In a good way.
The red for me represents the bleeding of the soul and not necessarily of the body. I am a huge fan of this film and a huge fan of Ingrid Thulin. I completely agree with Col Dax.
Is there a real point to all the misery, though? I’m just asking, I’ve never watched this film although I’ve always been curious about it, and I would like to see it sometime, if only for the use of the color red.
Well, it is was the one film that encouraged the academy to accept films about redness into the top categories, and could also be seen as one of the last chances that the academy would’ve ended up like Cannes by letting it be nominated for best picture.
Otherwise, I do think it’s a great piece beside his most intense, and intimate character studies. I love the term “chamber” movie because these are almost strictly actor pieces besides the unusual use of red, and the standard camera use. However, you’ll probably never see a better representation of a slow suffering death in a fiction film than by Harriett Anderson and her agonizing deep breaths, and pained face. Good god, the first five minutes show more beautiful acting than most films in their entirety, and Ingrid Thulin is more than convincing and horrifying when she finally breaks down. The stabbing scene also seemed like more than it needed to be, but maybe that’s what it needed to be, and maybe it could’ve been more.
I wouldn’t say it’s his best, or even his best of the seventies, but it’s got that literally brutal honesty that always makes a movie by him something to listen to.
Very fine art direction but the script is a dog. Somewhere around The Silence Bergman went off the rails and his films became a very self indulgent narration of his neuroses. It’s just too over the top.
But his films always look great.
I can definitely understand Doinel’s criticisms. That said, I prefer Bergman “off the rails” to his earlier self. Much like Fellini, I think Bergman was best when he’s rattling around in his own mind, poring over his own obsessions, un-self consciously. I think in this instance, it’s a matter of threshold. Determining where the precise line of demarcation exists between virtuosity and self indulgence is the tricky thing.
I think Cries and Whispers, while featuring maybe the most on-the-nose sequence in Bergman’s ouevre (the broken glass scene), is certainly one of his best. As emotionally wrenching and life-affirming as any film I’ve ever seen. The acting, the pacing, and the photography are all brilliant. I think it’s a challenging film, worthy of a good discussion.
I don’t think the film wallows in misery in the same way that the most grating of art films often do. I see the film much more in terms of a discussion about mortality and suffering. It’s a fact of life, and one that Bergman paints convincingly and honestly, without relying on it entirely to affirm his artistry and the film’s ultimate value. By pivoting on intense suffering, Bergman sets his narrative at the threshold of mortal anxiety, if this makes sense. The film is about suffering, about watching someone suffer, about powerlessness…. but I never have found the film to be morbid or exploitative. As discomforting as some of the scenes may be, they’ve never struck me as excessive or without dramatic import. I think it’s an honest, and sober-eyed vision of mortality. It takes the restraint of a master to tackle such material without reveling in its ugliness. I found it more cathartic than anything.
Bergman is my all-time favorite director, but I found Cries and Whispers to be overly soap-operaish and melodramatic. Probably The Serpents Egg is the only Bergman film I like less than Cries and Whispers.
It was, however, the first time I saw Liv Ullmann in color, which was interesting as I’d not realized she was a redhead. I’d always thought she was a blonde.
Its been a very lontime since I last saw Cries and Whispers, but for all of the things that the film is brilliant at, it bored me; and that is something that a film should never do-make you look at your watch.
My all time favorite Bergman and definitely in my top five films ever. It’s the most savagely intense and emotional film I have ever seen.
In my top 5 favorite films, most definitely!
“and that is something that a film should never do-make you look at your watch.”
Hmm, some films can seem tedious and demanding in the moment, yet can be rewarding viewing in hindsight.
While watching Jeanne Dielman, I tend to look at my watch but more out of curiosity than boredom.
Thanks for reviving this thread, Garrett.
I really enjoyed reading Patrick’s post from two years ago.
I really should revisit this, it has been a long time. I might get things out of it now that I didn’t before.
A great film, very challenging and sensual. I love the part where the camera pans across the room and gets to the view outside of the window where it is lush and green. Also, the ending is remarkable.
did anyone else find criterion’s transfer pretty disappointing? at times it was terrible.
I haven’t seen the Criterion in awhile, but I don’t recall have any issues with it.
One of the greatest films ever made. Perhaps the quintessential Bergman dealing with the complete and utter alienation of the human soul.
hopefully it gets a blu-ray upgrade soon. i’m sure it will. They have released quite a few of their other Bergman titles.. it’s only a matter of time
i take it back, for the most part, the transfer is very good, but its inconsistent with some scenes in need of some restoration
Drew Gregory
I have just recently seen this film for the first time. I am curious to see what people’s opinions on the film are. Which parts to you feel are real and which are fantasy? What do you feel is the significance of when the color red appears filling the screen? Also discuss any other aspects of the film.