Cries and Whispers (1972) - The Criterion Collection

Synopsis

Legendary director Ingmar Bergman creates a testament to the strength of the soul—and a film of absolute power. Karin and Maria come to the aid of their dying sister, Agnes, but jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness come before empathy. Agnes, tortured by cancer, transcends the pettiness of her sisters’ concerns to remember moments of being—moments that Bergman, with the help of Academy Award–winning cinematographer Sven Nykvist, translates into pictures of staggering beauty and unfathomable horror.

Cast

Agnes	Harriet Andersson
Anna	Kari Sylwan
Karin	Ingrid Thulin
Maria	Liv Ullmann
Pastor Isak	Anders Ek
Aunt Olga	Inga Gill
David	Erland Josephson
Joakim	Henning Moritzen
Frederik	Georg Årlin

Credits

Director	Ingmar Bergman
Screenplay	Ingmar Bergman
Producer	Lars-Owe Carlberg
Cinematography	Sven Nykvist
Editing	Siv Lundgren
Music	Frédéric Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach
Performed by	Käbi Laretei and Pierre Fournier

Disc Features

Lush new digital transfer, enhanced for 16×9 televisions
Ingmar Bergman: Reflections on Life, Death, and Love with Erland Josephson (2000), a candid and revealing 52-minute interview with Bergman and long-time collaborator Erland Josephson, originally broadcast on Swedish television
Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

From the Current

Liv Remembers Ingmar

Oct 9, 2009

More than two years after Ingmar Bergman’s death, his muse Liv Ullmann is still bursting with stories about the Swedish director. In a poignant and insightful profile by Diane Solway in this month’s issue of W...

Salute to Liv Ullmann

by Peter Cowie Dec 15, 2008

Flash back to September 1968. The Swedish Film Week in Sorrento, Italy, with its alfresco suppers and its excursions to Capri and Pompeii. Ingmar Bergman was expected, and he and Liv Ullmann were assigned a luxurious villa for the duration. But Ingmar pleaded an ear infection, and Liv was left...

Cries and Whispers

by Peter Cowie Jun 18, 2001

In his book Images, Ingmar Bergman has written: “All my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except for Cries and Whispers. In the screenplay, it says that red represents for me the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a...