Cries and Whispers [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Cries and Whispers stars Liv Ullman and Ingrid Thulin as the sisters of dying cancer patient Harriet Andersson. Both sisters have already had brushes with death: Ullman has had an affair which prompted her husband's suicide, while Thulin has long wanted to do away with herself, at one point mutilating her own vagina out of self-hatred. As for Andersson, she has been in pain so long that she feels as though she's in the midst of death-in-life. With her two sisters wrapped up in their own problems, Harriet turns to her housekeeper Kari Sylwan for comfort; Sylwan has herself suffered the death of a child, and has developed a philosophical attitude towards impending doom. One of the most influential moments of the film -- when two of the sisters share the innermost thoughts that they'd kept from one another for so many years -- is filmed without benefit of dialogue, with the music of Chopin (enhanced by cinematographer Sven Nykvist's carefully selected camera angles) "speaking" for the ladies. While Cries and Whispers only won the Oscar for cinematography, the film did very well for itself in international awards contests. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: 5.1, PCM Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: English

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Won Best Cinematography - 1973 (Sven Nykvist)
•     Nominated Best Costume Design - 1973 (Marik Vos-Lundh)
•     Nominated Best Director - 1973 (Ingmar Bergman)
•     Nominated Best Original Screenplay - 1973 (Ingmar Bergman)
•     Nominated Best Picture - 1973 (Ingmar Bergman)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - Foreign Language - 1972

• National Board of Review

•     Won Best Director - 1973 (Ingmar Bergman)
•     Won Best Foreign Film - 1973

• New York Film Critics Circle

•     Won Best Actress - 1972 (Liv Ullmann)
•     Won Best Director - 1972 (Ingmar Bergman)
•     Won Best Picture - 1972
•     Won Best Screenplay - 1972 (Ingmar Bergman)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Ingmar Bergman

• Producer:

  Lars-Owe Carlberg, Ingmar Bergman

• Screenwriter:

  Ingmar Bergman

• Cinematographer:

  Sven Nykvist

• Featured Music:

  Johann Sebastian Bach, Fryderyc Chopin

• Editor:

  Siv Lundgren

• Production Designer:

  Marik Vos-Lundh

• Costume Designer:

  Marik Vos-Lundh

• Makeup:

  Cecilia Drott, Borje Lundh

REVIEW:

• Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers (Viskningar Och Rop) finds the director exploring many of the same themes as his landmark Persona (1966). A study of three sisters and the "tissue of lies" between them, the film once again measures the tremors caused by long-buried secrets, dreams, and resentments. Not one gesture rings false, particularly in the distant-but-sympathetic performance of Bergman's longtime collaborator (and companion) Liv Ullmann, cast against type as the acidic Maria. Though obviously influenced by Chekhov and Tolstoy, Bergman makes the material his own, disrupting the script's Gothic facade with shocking, distinctly modern feelings and incidents: despite the Freudian and Jungian interpretations that can be made of individual scenes, Cries never substitutes abstract theory for character development. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist keeps the proceedings from becoming an inert chamber play; his expressionistic use of color -- punctuated by the fades to red between sequences -- is unlike anything previously seen in Bergman's work. Cries and Whispers became one of the only foreign-language films ever nominated for an Oscar as Best Picture, and Bergman received his first nomination as Best Director, cementing (if tardily) his status as the leading foreign art-movie director. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi