Cries and Whispers

Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin star in one of Ingmar Bergman’s most visually striking films.

This existential wail of a drama concerns two sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), keeping vigil for a third, Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is dying of cancer and can find solace only in the arms of a beatific servant (Kari Sylwan). An intensely felt film that is one of Bergman’s most striking formal experiments, Cries and Whispers (which won an Oscar for the extraordinary color photography by Sven Nykvist) is a powerful depiction of human behavior in the face of death, positioned on the borders between reality and nightmare, tranquility and terror.

About the Ingmar Bergman Centennial

This fall, theaters across the greater Boston area will celebrate the 100th birthday of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman with a collaborative retrospective of his work. Together the Brattle Theatre, Coolidge Corner Theatre, and Harvard Film Archive will be hosting over 30 screenings of the filmmaker’s work.

No name is more synonymous with the postwar explosion of international art-house cinema than Ingmar Bergman, a master storyteller who startled the world with his stark intensity and naked pursuit of the most profound metaphysical and spiritual questions. In a career that spanned six decades, Bergman directed dozens of films in an astonishing array of tones, ranging from comedies whose lightness and complexity belie their brooding hearts to groundbreaking formal experiments and excruciatingly intimate explorations of family relationships.