Cries and Whispers () is a 1972 Swedish tragedy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann. The film, set in a mansion at the end of the 19th century, is about three sisters and a servant who struggle with the terminal cancer of one of the sisters (Andersson). The servant (Sylwan) is close to her, while the other two sisters (Ullmann and Thulin) confront their emotional distance from each other.
Inspired by Bergman's mother, Karin Åkerblom, and his vision of four women in a red room, Cries and Whispers was filmed at Taxinge-Näsby Castle in 1971. Its themes include faith, the female psyche and the search for meaning in suffering, and academics have found Biblical allusions. Unlike previous Bergman films, it uses saturated colour, crimson in particular.
After its premiere in the United States, distributed by Roger Corman and New World Pictures, the film was released in Sweden and screened out of competition at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Following two unsuccessful films by Bergman, Cries and Whispers was a critical and commercial success. It received five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture (rare for a foreign-language film at the time). Cinematographer Sven Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and Cries and Whispers won the Guldbagge Award for Best Film and other honours.
The film inspired stage adaptations by Ivo van Hove and Andrei Șerban and influenced later cinema. It was commemorated on Swedish postage stamps referring to a scene in which Andersson and Sylwan replicate the Pietà. It is often ranked among Bergman's finest works.
Plot In a large 19th-century mansion with red walls and carpets, Agnes is dying of uterine cancer. Her sisters, Maria and Karin, arrive at their childhood home and take turns with the maid, Anna, watching over Agnes. Anna, more religious than the sisters, prays after she lost her young daughter. When Agnes's doctor David visits, he sees his former lover Maria. Maria remembers their affair and her failed marriage with her husband Joakim, who stabbed himself non-fatally in response to the adultery. David tells her that she has become more indifferent. Agnes remembers their mother, who neglected and teased her and favoured Maria, with greater understanding and recalls sharing a moment of sorrow with her. While Agnes' sisters remain emotionally distant, Anna comforts the suffering Agnes by baring her breasts and holding her at night.
Agnes dies after a long period of suffering, and at her wake the priest says that her faith was stronger than his own. Maria tells Karin that it is unusual for them to avoid touching each other or having a deep conversation. She tries to touch Karin, who recoils at the gesture. Karin recalls an earlier occasion at the mansion, where, struggling with self-harm, she mutilated her genitals with a piece of broken glass to repel her husband Fredrik. Karin later dines with Maria, saying that Anna was devoted to Agnes and probably deserves a memento. She says she resents Anna's seeming familiarity with her and Maria, speaks of her own suicidal tendencies, and confesses her hatred of Maria and her flirtatiousness and shallow smiles. The sisters reconcile after the argument, touching each other.
In a dream sequence, Agnes briefly returns to life and asks Karin and then Maria to approach her. Karin, repelled by the invitation, says that she still has life and does not love Agnes enough to join her. Maria approaches the undead Agnes but flees in terror when she grabs her, saying that she cannot leave her husband and children. Anna re-enters the room and takes Agnes back to bed, where she cradles the dead Agnes in her arms.
The family decides to send Anna away at the end of the month, with Fredrik refusing to award her with any additional severance pay, and the maid rejects her promised memento. Maria returns to Joakim, and Karin cannot believe Maria's claim that she does not remember their touch. Anna finds Agnes' diary with an account of a visit with Maria, Karin and Anna, with a shared, nostalgic moment on a swing. Agnes wrote that "come what may, this is happiness."
Production Development
According to Bergman, he conceived the story during a lonely, unhappy time on Fårö when he wrote constantly. He described a recurring dream of four women in white clothing in a red room, whispering to each other. He said that this symbolized his childhood view of the soul as a faceless person who was black on the outside, representing shame, and red on the inside. The persistence of the vision indicated to Bergman that it could be a film, he said, and he planned a "portrait of my mother ... the great beloved of my childhood". Karin has the same name as Bergman's mother, but all four female protagonists are intended to represent aspects of her personality.
A childhood memory of the Sophiahemmet mortuary also influenced the director:
Since Bergman's films were difficult to market, foreign capital was unavailable to finance the film. He decided to shoot Cries and Whispers in Swedish rather than English (as his previous film, The Touch, had been) and finance it through his production company, Cinematograph. Although he used 750,000 SEK of his savings and borrowed 200,000 SEK, he also asked the Swedish Film Institute for help with the film's 1.5-million SEK budget. This attracted some criticism, since Bergman was not an up-and-coming director in the greatest need of subsidy. To save money, the main actresses and Nykvist returned their salaries as loans and were nominal co-producers.
In his book, Images, Bergman wrote: "Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover". In an essay included with the DVD, critic Peter Cowie quoted the director: "All of my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except Cries and Whispers".
Casting + Cast list Actor Role Agnes Anna Karin Maria (and her mother) Isak, the priest Aunt Olga David Joakim Fredrik Maria's daughter young Maria When Bergman wrote the screenplay, he intended from the start to cast Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. He explained his choice of Harriet Andersson for Agnes: "I would very much like to have Harriet, too, since she belongs to this breed of enigmatic women". Andersson had not worked with Bergman for years, and he sent her notes rather than a complete screenplay. Ullmann described receiving a 50-page "personal letter" from Bergman describing the story which began, "Dear Friends: We're now going to make a film together. It is a sort of a vision that I have and I will try to describe it". Andersson did not receive a backstory about Agnes; Agnes' sisters were married with children, but Andersson was uncertain whether Agnes had ever married or became ill at an early age and lived with her mother.
Bergman and Ullmann had a previous romantic relationship, and their daughter Linn Ullmann appears as both Maria's daughter and Anna's daughter in the picture. Another of Bergman's daughters, Lena, also appears as young Maria.
The director initially said that he hoped Mia Farrow would be in the film: "Let's see if that works out. It probably will; why shouldn't it?" However, Farrow was never cast. Kari Sylwan, a novice in Bergman's films, had what would have been Farrow's role.
Pre-production Few of Bergman's previous films were shot in colour. Red was particularly sensitive, and cinematographer Sven Nykvist made many photography tests to capture balanced combinations of reds, whites and skin colours. To the disappointment of Swedish Film Institute members, Bergman refused to shoot in their new, expensive studios and filmed on location at Taxinge-Näsby Castle. Since the mansion's interior was dilapidated, the crew was free to paint and decorate as they saw fit.
Filming
Principal photography took place from 9 September to 30 October 1971. Nykvist used Eastmancolor film, which reduced graininess and would be the most sensitive to colours. The final, outdoor swing scene was shot early in production so the filmmakers could have sunlight before the darker season set in. Ullmann said that every scene was shot in natural light, using large windows for indoor scenes.
Andersson described the on-set mood as light, an antidote to the film's heavy subject matter. She said that although she usually read the screenplay and went to bed early during a production, the filmmakers kept her awake late to enhance her tired, ill appearance. The actress modeled her death scene on the death of her father, and Bergman directed her deep, violent inhalations.
Themes and interpretations Previous Bergman films had focused on the apparent absence of God, but scholar Julian C. Rice quoted Bergman as saying that he had moved beyond that theme. Rice wrote that Cries and Whispers, following The Silence (1963) and Persona (1966), was based more on psychology and individuation. Academic Eva Rueschmann said that psychoanalysis was an obvious tool with which to study the film, given the subconscious links between its characters.
Family and detachment
Professor Egil Törnqvist examined the film's title. The young Maria whispers to her mother, and Karin and Maria whisper to each other as they bond. According to Törnqvist, "The cries relate to the opposite emotions: anguish, impotence, loneliness". Professor Emma Wilson described the family's predicament, with Karin feeling endangered by touch and Maria seeking an "erotic" touch. However, Maria is repelled by Agnes' decay and her dead body. Rueschmann explained Karin's repulsion to touch as a result of her degree of isolation and restraint. The scene where Anna cradles Agnes suggests that touch and sensation are soothing, despite the "opaque" question of their relationship, which may be comparable to sisterhood.
The magic lantern show the sisters enjoy is "Hansel and Gretel", which reveals Agnes' feelings of abandonment and her mother's favouring of Maria; according to Rueschmann, the Brothers Grimm story of sibling unity contrasts the sisters' estrangement. Cinema historian P. Adams Sitney wrote that Hansel and Gretel's parents abandoned them in the forest, and Agnes' cancer is the equivalent of the witch in the Brothers Grimm tale. Karin's cutting of her vulva means that her husband will not have sex with her, and the red wine symbolises blood from the womb. Törnqvist wrote that Karin's transfer of blood from her vulva to her mouth means that she will neither have sex nor speak, and preventing communication reinforces loneliness. Sitney wrote that the family is most united when reading Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, which describes "male solidarity and chicanery, threatened by female plots for marriage". According to Frank Gado, detachment returns after Agnes' funeral. Anna is dismissed without warmth or sympathy, and the men deny her monetary rewards despite years of service. Maria also rejects "sentimental appeals" from Karin.
Film scholar Marc Gervais wrote that Cries and Whispers has no definitive solution of whether suffering and death have any meaning, citing the pastor who expresses his own doubts and fears when he eulogises Agnes. Gervais likened this to the protagonist of Bergman's earlier Winter Light, Bergman's own conflicted feelings and his relationship to his father, Erik, a minister of the Church of Sweden. According to Gervais, the ending presents Bergman's solution: a touch, on certain occasions, can make life worthwhile. Törnqvist compared the ending to that of Bergman's 1957 Wild Strawberries; it "points to the past, to a paradisaic existence in this life, to the communion inherent in childhood that has later been lost".
Sex and gender roles