Word: bergmans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Directed by INGMAR BERGMAN...
Screenplay by INGMAR BERGMAN...
...Here Bergman seems to be working again within that still, grave place from which sprang such transitional works as Brink of Life or Hour of the Wolf. This is not, like Persona, one of his greatest, most enlarging films, although it does bear some superficial stylistic resemblances to that early work. Cries and Whispers is somewhat more formal, measured, perceptibly detached, a film of physical and emotional violence carried into forbidden areas of the spirit...
...Bergman's films, the story-the premise-is meticulously simple. Two women, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), care for their sister Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is dying of some awful unspecified illness. As they attend her during her last days, they remember and relive old memories of childhood, of deep bitterness and irresolvable rivalries. They touch each other, torment each other. The only source of strength in this stately, silent household is the stolid maid Anna (Kari Sylwan), whose own daughter has died and who lavishes all her love and her tenderness on Agnes...
...trouble with this, the reason that we cannot fully accept it, is that Bergman's anguish is so much more intense than this final fillip of grace. The despair is so much deeper than the redemption. There are but a few fleeting glimpses from Agnes' diary; perhaps there ought to have been more, to serve both as balance and counterpoint. There should certainly have been more about the men in the film, who are shadows and ciphers. The single most shattering scene in the film becomes, for this reason, unnecessarily oblique. Preparing herself for bed one evening, Karin...