Classic Movie Review: Cries and Whispers (1973)

Cries & Whispers (1973)

Directed by: Ingmar Bergman.

Written by: Ingmar Bergman.

Starring: Harriet Andersson (Agnes), Kari Sylwan (Anna), Ingrid Thulin (Karin), Liv Ullmann (Maria / Mother), Anders Ek (Isak), Inga Gill (Storyteller), Erland Josephson (David), Henning Moritzen (Joakim), Georg Årlin (Fredrik). 

 

I’m not sure Ingmar Bergman ever made a darker, more despairing film than Cries and Whispers – and if he never did, you have to wonder if anyone ever did. It is essentially a film about four women – three sisters, one of whom is dying, and the dying woman’s nurse who cares for her. It is a film obsessed with death – and the moral failings of this family. It is also the most stunning use of color in Bergman’s career – he preferred black and white, but black and white would be unthinkable for Cries and Whispers – which uses red perhaps better than any film in history. This is a story of love, death and faith.

 

Agnes (Harriet Andersson) has been sick for over a decade now – slowly dying of some form on cancer, and now in her final days, she is in almost constant pain. Throughout all that time, her companion has been the family servant and nurse – Anna (Kari Sylwan) – who loves Agnes more than anyone, and has a simple faith – praying to God for Agnes, and for her own dead child. Like most all of Bergman’s films, Anna only receives silence in response to her prays – unlike most of his films, she is not haunted by that silence. It does not shake her faith.

 

In the final days of her illness, Agnes is joined at the family estate by her sisters, Maria (Liv Ullman) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin). There are perhaps not two more vain characters in Bergman’s entire filmography than these two. They are repulsed by Agnes and her dying body, so they pretty much avoid her. Maria is obsessed with her own beauty, and when the doctor (Erland Josephson), a former lover, arrives she tries to seduce him, not caring about her own marriage. The doctor is also a horrible person – he knows Maria’s vanity, and so picks on the few flaws of aging that have started to show on her face. Karin is hard and cruel – if Maria is overtly sexual, Karin is the opposite. What she does to avoid having sex with her husband makes for the film’s most shocking moment.

 

This is perhaps the most claustrophobic film ever made. It keeps us in this manor house – which is decorated almost entirely in reds and white, and keeps us inside of the pain of the film. These three sisters come from a wealthy family, and have essentially done nothing with their lives, except to remain wealthy. They were once close – we see in some flashbacks – but that has gone away now. Maria and Karin despise each other – and they despise Agnes as well. Her death brings them close for a moment – the only moment we see the sisters touch each other, as they caress each other’s faces, and talk briefly how they love each other, before Bergman drops out the sound, so we can no longer hear them. It’s all an act anyway. They are incapable of loving each other – or anyone else. The next day, they will revert back to their cold, calculating hatred of each other, spoken in polite terms – not like earlier when Karin confesses her hatred for Maria. As they prepare to leave, the family – Maria and Karin, and their husbands who they hate, all talk dispassionately about Anna – about giving her something remember Agnes by before they dismiss her without a thought after more than a decade of service. Anna, in what passes for raising her voice, tells them she doesn’t want anything. She has already taken Agnes’ journal – something that wouldn’t interest her family anyway.

 

If Maria and Karin are among the worst characters Bergman has ever put on screen, then Anna is probably the most purely good. She has faith in God, and that gets her through everything. She loves Agnes – and doesn’t shy away from her as she is dying. She cradles her against her bosom when she cries out in pain – bringing to mind religious painting of Mary cradling Jesus in the gripes of horrific pain. Agnes does endure that pain with Christ-like resolve. Bergman admires Anna and her faith – even if he never confirms it.  The silence of God haunted Bergman – but it doesn’t haunt Anna. It brings her comfort and faith. Bergman admires that – even if he can never share it.

 

There is more going on than that in Cries and Whispers – it is about maternal sexuality in its way. It is also the film in Bergman’s filmography that most resembles a dream – that operates on a dream logic. It’s the culmination of a number of films, perhaps starting with Persona (1966) that tried to capture that feel. Perhaps feeling he perfected it here, he moved on to something more realistic with his next film – Scenes from a Marriage – and continued for most of the rest of his career (pretty much retiring a decade later) with Fanny and Alexander (which takes some elements from Cries and Whispers as well).

 

It is a stunning film. It is the one film in Bergman’s career that garnered a Best Picture nomination – and it one the great Sven Nykvist his first of two Oscars (the other for Fanny and Alexander) for Best Cinematography. Bergman was smart to keep the runtime short – it’s only 91 minutes – because spending more time here could easily become suffocating – a nonstop misery parade that no one would want to endure. It still wasn’t much of a box office hit – understandably – but has become a staple of art house films – something all film buffs eventually have to see and wrestle with – much like other Bergman films like The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona and Fanny & Alexander – among many others. It may not be his best film (my vote has always gone to Persona) – but it’s one of his most personal, most painful and most stunning. It’s one of his many masterpieces.