alr

Cries and Whispers
(Viskningar och rop)

Screening on Film
Directed by Ingmar Bergman .
With Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann.
Sweden, 1972, 35mm, color, 91 min.
Swedish with English subtitles.

This beautiful color film presents a Victorian upper-class family coping with the final illness and death of a sister (Harriet Andersson in a great performance). Members of a decadent social class fall, as in Chekhov. Characters face the nightmare within themselves, as in Dostoyevsky. Characters savage each other, as in Strindberg. Bergman’s favorite among all his films, Cries and Whispers, he said, "touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." The film becomes an almost abstract contemplation of the border between life and death, being and non-being. But for all its pain and intensity, there is a sense in the film that life is going somewhere new and wonderful.

Part of film series

Read more

Five Directors (Part I)

Other film series with this film

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: Actors U–Z

Read more

Darkness Unto Light.
The Cinema of Ingmar Bergman

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas