50 Years Later: Cries and Whispers

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin
Running time: 91 minutes

“It’s early Monday morning and I am in pain”  – a pain that never relents, never subsides, physically or mentally, suspending the narrative of Cries and Whispers in a suffocating cloud of dread. While watching Agnes on her deathbed, in the sinewy throws of uterine cancer, we’re reminded of The Exorcist, a film released the following year. Both films provided a startling manifestation of faith and death and they share similar visual iconography (Friedkin finished filming four months after Bergman’s release), but Ingmar Bergman’s internalised, psychological depiction of family violence has only become more visceral as time keeps on ticking. 

To aid the family maid Anna in her care for their dying sister, Maria and Karin find themselves back at their 19th century family estate. Played by Bergman’s go-to leading ladies Liv Ullman (Maria) and Ingrid Thullin (Karin), the two sisters couldn’t be more painfully apart. Maria is a sultry, fair haired, almost child-like woman, totally aware of her physical beauty whose soulful gaze of oceanic blue hogged the limelight of her mother’s affection. Karin, with her successful diplomatic career is crippled by her own depression, numb to any kind of human emotion; the only thing that gives her any semblance of feeling is when she self-harms. However, both women share a self-serving disposition. The anguish transcends Agnes’ cancer, and the familial obligations supposed to bring the siblings together only compounds the dysfunction, and the simmering bitterness that resides within is brought to a head. In fact, the only person who facilitates any empathy is the young maid, Anna, a woman straddled by an unwavering faith despite the death of her infant child.

As well as his actors, the director reteams with Sven Nykvist in what is perhaps the pinnacle of their collaborations, ultimately sending Nykvist home with an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Twisted psyches are laid bare by Nykvist’s imagery; the lighting is both lucid and crystalline as the actors alternate between deception, assimilation and confrontation. It’s a visual style of juxtapositions that stays true to the film’s title with the emotional subtlety of a whisper and the raw agony of a cry.

Autumnal chills, religious imagery and existential crisis are an occupational hazard when it comes to Bergman films. But what makes Cries and Whispers special is how he uses the notion of flesh as a conduit for his obsessions. Whether it’s the delicate liquidity of Liv Ullman's face, Agnes’ excruciating fits of pain, Karin’s brutal self-mutilation, the warmth of an exposed breast, we are always aware of the soft machine and its internal crises. Each character channels the frailty of flesh in their own ways. Maria’s relationship with flesh is superficial, with her ditsy smirk and her pursuits; whereas for Karin, any kind of physical contact repulses her, only a jagged shard of glass can thaw icy numbness of her “tissue of lies”. Agnes with her terminal illness yearns for a warm hand, but her unwilling sisters leave her wanting in her state of decay. Of course it is time – the great decomposer, anti-rational, inevitable – that is the constant reminder of the character’s frailty, malleability and mortality. In the film's many moments of deafening silence, the ominous ticking of a clock is the only tangibility. 

Cries and Whispers is Bergman working at the height of his powers. It’s perhaps his most cynical most sadistic film that contains some of his most striking imagery – the estate’s decor is uncannily swamped in blood red, like a sardonic manifestation of menstrual suffering – in a body of work that contains art-house masterpieces like Persona and The Seventh Seal. The ensemble is charged with a vicious, bloodthirsty chemistry and standout performances from Thullin and Andersson that ranks among the most harrowing personifications on the silver screen. Bergman’s film is a melodrama that haunts like a psychological horror; a masochistic portrait of grief and resentment that once seen, can never be forgotten.

Did you know? B-movie mogul Roger Corman had just started his own company New World Films and wanted to pick up Cries and Whispers to give his operation some prestige.