When Whispers Cry

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I see a road, and a girl on her way to a large house, a manor house, perhaps. She has a little dog with her. Inside the house there's a large red room where three sisters dressed in white are sitting and whispering together. Do you think it could turn into a film?

Nykvist circumspectly replied that the images sounded promising. That's when you'll get the screenplay. As usual he made a start on the casting while writing the script: And then I want Mia Farrow; let's see if that works out. It probably will; why shouldn't it? She was later to become the actress of choice for Woody Allen, a director who, more than any other, has paid homage to Bergman in film after film.

About the film

The fact that Bergman had Farrow in his sights ten years before she and Allen worked together for the first time is a somewhat eerie coincidence. With Cries and Whispers, a project that had occupied his thoughts for so long, Bergman was eager to continue the experimentation he had embarked upon in The Silence and Persona. He was especially keen to work together with Nykvist on the colour and lighting, to 'really get stuck into the laboratory'.

Another proviso was that the film should be in Swedish, despite what Bergman considered the 'wretched' state of Swedish cinema at the time. He quickly realised that funding for such a vague project would present difficulties, so he decided to go ahead and finance it himself through his own company Cinematograph. But the film turned out to be more expensive than he had first thought, and additional funds were needed. The agreed solution was that of the total budget of 1.

The structure of the financial package resulted in a major rumpus: Critical voices insisted that the Institute's resources would be put to better use if they were made available to less established filmmakers. When the Film Institute board arrived at its decision, it was on the tacit understanding that the film would be shot in the studios of the newly-built Filmhuset, so that its own staff would derive benefit from the project.

This move simply added fuel to the criticism. In response, Harry Schein , chairman of the Film Institute, penned an angry defence of his board's decision which was published on the arts pages of Expressen:. Bergman's films bring in very healthy returns from the entire world. This co-production with the director does not mean that the Film Institute is helping Bergman any more than the cinematographer and actors, who are investing their fees in this work, are helping him. It is more a case of Bergman lending a helping hand, not the Film Institute, on account of all the people who will be given a chance to work thanks to the revenues from this film.

The funding that the Film Institute is providing for Bergman's film is not being taken away from anyone else. Later on in the article, following this low-key introduction, Schein becomes more agitated, venting his spleen on a critical band of journalists and resentful fellow film directors:. There is a petty miserliness, personal rancour, and sordid envy behind all this lobbying, behind all the posturing of newspaper editors. In any other country you might care to name, such a piece of news would have been warmly received by all radical film lovers.

That's the way it is: Images obstinately resurface without my knowing what they want with me; then they diasppear only to come back, looking exactly the same. Many observers have tended to view the central women in the film, Agnes, Karin, Maria and Anna, as four aspects of one and the same person. Bergman has concurred with this view. For him, this is a typical device. On one occasion he referred to the film as a 'self-portrait' of his mother who was also called Karin.

Yet it is quite possibly a conscious play on words: It was a spontaneous and careless remark. It was to haunt me. Since then it has always been linked to the film. Some stupid remarks one makes tend to live a life on their own. It was a lie. Yet of all the world's great dramatists, Anton Chekhov has hardly featured at all in the Bergman canon. He only ever directed two plays by the Russian master: This may seem somewhat odd, since the two of them have much in common.

The film opens with a montage of clocks the almost banal interpretation of which is that Agnes' time is up , which clearly bears comparison with the earlier writing:. So she goes up to the tall, dark grandfather clock, then to the drawing room with its two small, gilded table clocks under glass domes, decorated with shepherds and shepherdesses. She sets all the clocks in the house in motion, and now the silence is filled with the soft, living tick-tock of four clocks.

Before these have finished, the sound is joined by the rounded, calm and dignified chimes of the bedroom clock. Finally, five muted chimes ring out from the sombre grandfather clock. Bergman's film shoots always begin with meticulous preparation: It is a method he probably learnt from the theatre, and one which has worked well: For this film, in which he himself was responsible for so much risk capital, the procedure was even more important to him than before, not least because he realised that many technical difficulties lay ahead.

If you want to show dawns and dusks, you can't simply work on the lighting, you also have to work with filters in the laboratory. It's a question of daring to question the 'rules' of colour film. Bergman had directed him in a number of television plays and theatre productions dating back to In one anecdote he recalls how at the start of filming Bergman announced to the entire crew: Do you know what gamma globulin is?

Everyone had to stick to the time schedule, and to the all-important budget. Lie there for a long time with your eyes shut. We must know you're awake. We need to feel it. His actors have often been granted major freedom to develop their own roles, although he stops short of allowing them to improvise freely. Character interpretation is clearly a complex process, or, as Bergman himself puts it: But in making these bleaker films, the cast and crew usually appear to have had a great deal of fun on the set.

Everyone recalls this particular shoot with affection, not least the four female leads, who maintained a good deal of gently self-mocking cheer throughout. Two of his daughters also appear in the film: Lena Bergman and Linn Ullmann. Yet even though the atmosphere was cheerful for the most part, it wasn't without its darker moments. I don't want to. I can't stand myself any longer. This is so difficult that I've lost the will to live. Moreover, during one particular take in the film, Bergman wearily summarised the process as follows: The only thing that distinguishes one film from another is the fact that we're all getting older Nykvist also tells how Bergman wanted to sit as close to the camera as possible so as to maintain eye contact with the actors: He and the assistant cameraman, who was responsible for focusing, would fight over the best position.

But Ingmar was so thin that he could sometimes manage to squeeze in between the legs of the camera and sit on the floor right under the lens. Then he was happy. It was a polite affair in which he fielded questions such as which part of himself he devoted to the theatre, and which part to films. On its release in Sweden, the film provoked a good deal of criticism of Bergman in general. The broadsheet Dagens Nyheter, for example, accused him of being sentimental at the expense of social and political conviction.

Even though the film was set in the past, it ignored any historical context. A review in the communist newspaper Gnistan "The Spark" reads:. This is a world event, so they say.

Just like Volvo and Swedish vodka, Bergman is a saleable product in the global marketplace. He would never, as many other artists did, take a stand on behalf of the people of Vietnam. He is very hostile towards the proletarian theatres that are beginning to spring up. In acting circles it is a well known fact that he thinks that workers' theatre is bad theatre. He would never sink to such a low level. Bergman makes art for company directors and their like, a sort of Playboy art. It always involves a little nudity, something a bit shocking and a few emotional entanglements. The film's US distributor was, oddly enough, Roger Corman, the legendary and prolific producer of B- and horror movies.

But it was a fortunate move for both parties, since the film was such an amazing success. You put a coin in the slot, the wheels started spinning, and suddenly three oranges lined up in front of you.

Money just gushed out of the machine While Cries and Whispers may have inspired the theme and tone of Woody Allen's Interiors , it has probably also influenced Another woman ten years later, through the figure of the Mother, coming from the garden in a white dress, as an elegant ghost from the past. More violent is Karin's vaginal mutilation in the middle of the film, which seems to have made some impression on Michael Haneke and — in a different register — William Friedkin. Look here for heirs to other Bergman films.

Svensk Filmindustri, Svenska Filminstitutet Swedish distributor: FilmTeknik AB Production company: Eastman Color Sound system: Optical mono Original length minutes: Cello Suite no 5 c-minor Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach Title: Academic Laura Hubner agreed with CineAction essayist Varda Burstyn's view that Cries and Whispers depicts the suppression of women, but it does not endorse the suppression and the film opposes patriarchy. According to Rueschmann, her daughters assume or reject her position and harm themselves in the process. Rueschmann quoted Bergman as saying his "ceaseless fascination with the whole race of women is one of [his] mainsprings.

Obviously such an obsession implies ambivalence; it has something compulsive about it. Although Agnes' apparent resurrection may reflect Anna's fear or desire , Emma Wilson wrote that it blurred the line between life and dream and might involve supernatural activity. Death is the ultimate loneliness; that is what is so important.

Agnes's death has been caught up halfway out into the void. I can't see that there's anything odd about that. Yes, by Christ there is! This situation has never been known, either in reality or at the movies.

According to Sitney, the statue in the prologue may be Apollo or Orpheus. If the artistic, doomed Agnes matches Orpheus as well as Bergman, Agnes' mother may correspond to Eurydice representing "the green world". Adams Sitney concluded that Cries and Whispers tells of an "Orphic transformation of terror into art, of the loss of the mother into the musical richness of autumnal color". The sisters' Aunt Olga uses the magic lantern to narrate "Hansel and Gretel", and Sitney connected this with "the gift of fairy tales —and thereby the psychic-defense machinery for exteriorising infantile and Oedipal terrors".

In , Variety 's staff defined "Bergman's lean style" as including a "use of lingering close-ups, fades to red and a soundtrack echoing with the ticking of clocks, the rustle of dresses and the hushed cries of the lost". Wilson noted the film's red rooms occupied by women in white, and the "azure, Edenic images of the start are gradually engulfed in crimson". Block described its colour variety as minimal, with an emphasis on "extremely saturated red".

Sven Nykvist

Sitney associates this with menstruation and castration. Wilson described other uses of imagery: Johann Sebastian Bach 's Sarabande No. Sounds are used in other ways, with Anna's dead daughter apparently audible when Anna is near the cradle following Agnes' death. The film premiered at the Spegeln theatre in Stockholm on 5 March Foss wrote a less-positive review in Fant , calling it "a rhapsody of petrified Bergman themes".

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The film was generally praised in the United States. Empire critic David Parkinson gave Cries and Whispers five stars in , writing that the film fit a subset of "character study" at which Bergman was adept. It is so personal, so penetrating of privacy, we almost want to look away". She screams, whimpers, begs, and cries. She craves death and fears it". Berardinelli considered Bergman's use of crimson effective in creating mood ; the "natural associations one makes with this color, especially in a story like this, are of sin and blood".

Feature Film - Productions - Ingmar Bergman

Don Druker wrote a negative review in the Chicago Reader , criticising a lack of substance, [92] and Time Out ' s review called the film a " red herring " compared to Bergman's purer psychological dramas. The film was nominated for, and won, several other awards from critics' associations and festivals. In , PostNord Sverige issued a postage stamp of the scene where Anna holds Agnes as part of a series commemorating the history of Swedish cinema.

It has been adapted for the stage. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the Swedish film. For the album by Dominic Duval, see Cries and Whispers album. Swedish theatrical release poster. Mazurka in A minor. The film includes a Chopin mazurka. Bergman was possibly trying to communicate that he understood Erik, though the name of the character, Ericsson son of Erik , may indicate the character represents Bergman more than his father. Introduction by Ingmar Bergman. Cries and Whispers Blu-ray. Archived from the original on 16 November Retrieved 15 November The Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

Archived from the original on 15 August Retrieved 28 June Archived from the original on 1 October Retrieved 12 November Harriet Anderrson on Cries and Whispers. Retrieved 11 October Archived from the original on 13 June Retrieved 17 January Archived from the original on 22 May Retrieved 9 December Berlin International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 1 December Retrieved 21 November Archived from the original on 14 November Retrieved 13 November The New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 November Archived from the original on 22 February Retrieved 21 February Retrieved 1 April Archived from the original on 22 November Retrieved 22 November Bergman's Masterful Chronicle of Pain and Death".

Archived from the original on 2 December Bergman's angst 'Cries' on Blu-ray". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 17 November Retrieved 16 November Archived from the original on 19 January Archived from the original on 12 November Retrieved 14 November Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 2 October British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Archived from the original on 18 November Retrieved 17 November National Board of Review.

Archived from the original on 3 June National Society of Film Critics. Archived from the original on 29 July New York Film Critics Circle. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: University of Wisconsin Press. Amsterdam, Boston, Heidelberg, London: Corman, Roger ; Jerome, Jim The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice Fourth ed.

Cries and Whispers

The Passion of Ingmar Bergman. Montreal, Kingston, London and Ithaca: From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies Third ed. University of Chicago Press. The Films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of Light and Darkness. I premi del cinema in Italian. Long, Robert Emmet University Press of Mississippi.

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