Word: ullmanns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tells the actions of three sisters and a maid who wait through the autumn in a country mansion for one of the sisters to die. Agnes (Harriet Andersson) has cancer; her older sister Karin (Ingrid Thulin), the smartest and severest of the group, and her other sister, Maria (Liv Ullmann) an overripe coquette, have temporarily left their husbands--a diplomat and a businessman--to nurse her at their childhood home. The peasant girl, Anna (Kari Sylwa), is a servant who has been with the family for years and is devoted to Agnes...
...affair. The bash at Sardi's was closed to reporters and all but a few pressagents and publicists. The critics did relent enough to let in the winners and their stand-ins, like John Gielgud, who collected the Best Actor's prize for Laurence Olivier (Sleuth). Liv Ullmann not only grabbed the prize as Best Actress (Cries and Whispers) but picked up three awards for her director Ingmar Bergman (Best Director, Screenplay and Picture awards for Cries and Whispers...
...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...
...permitted to be supreme. Bergman orchestrates them scrupulously, so that the film is the very definition of flawless ensemble playing. Kari Sylwan, the only one of the quar tet unfamiliar from previous Bergman films, gives Anna a strange, almost mys tical sense of strength. Liv Ullmann's Maria is that rare creation, a vacuous creature of substance. This seeming paradox is one excellent measure of Berg man's talent, and Miss Ullmann...
...quote me as saying about Liv Ullmann, one of the most talented and versatile actresses in motion pictures, that she is "the nicest goddamn actress I've ever seen on a set." That is not my language but only a pitiful platitude in TIME style...