ThiefHott Too much of everything

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

ags123 I lived in Manhattan when "Cries and Whispers" was released in theaters and remember how the New York intelligentsia were all over this film. I guess it had some shock value at the time. Revisiting it forty years later, I find it boring, shallow and fatally lacking in humor. Filled with talk and solemn posturing that ultimately leads nowhere, the final flashback scene is scant reward for all the Sturm und Drang that preceded it. I even think Sven Nykvist's acclaimed cinematography looks dated. There are numerous clumsy zooms, the painterly tableaux look self-conscious and forced, and the fades to red were done eight years previously by Robert Burks for Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie." Viewers would have to be as masochistic as Ingrid Thulin's character to enjoy this pretentious gabfest.

Jose Cruz This is perhaps one of the most accessible Bergman films and one of the least pretentious, which is frankly a problem that I think some of his films have. It is a highly dramatic work of art. I should notice that I am very rigorous on my rating system: 8/10 is for an excellent film, indeed less than 100 films that I have seem score 9 or higher. So one shouldn't think that I found this film bad, only that it wasn't among my favorites ever.The camera work of this film is excellent and the cinematography looks like something from a late Kubrick film.Highly recommended for fans of art films that have a plot, characters and drama (which some Bergman films lack, such as The Seventh Seal).

TheLittleSongbird One of Bergman's best films along with The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander and Persona. Whether it is the most accessible of Bergman's films I am not sure(of his masterpieces I'd say Wild Strawberries and of his films overall probably The Magic Flute), but it perhaps his most emotionally complex film. Bergman's films on the most part have superb direction and thought-provoking screenplays and Cries and Whispers is no exception on both counts, in fact it is one of the finer cases of being so. It is incredibly well made, with luscious cinematography by Sven Nykvist, an unforgettable manor house setting and a red colour scheme that proves just mesmerising. The music is also hauntingly beautiful. Harriet Andersson wrenches the gut as Agnes, while Liv Ullman and Ingrid Thulin are equally as effective. As is Kari Sylwan, whose grief as the peasant maid provides some of the most moving moments of Cries and Whispers. What really distinguishes Cries and Whispers aside from the production values, Bergman's direction and Andersson's performance is the story, which focuses on the failure of love and agony of loss. The family drama is intense, the agony of loss aspect is just harrowing and the use of memories and fantasies help to make the failure of love parts deeply moving. Overall, a masterpiece that is emotionally complex, superbly directed, beautifully acted and made and is moving, intelligent and harrowing in equal bouts. May not be for all tastes, but my advice generally is don't miss it. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Leah Films This film explores existentialism through the physical, emotional, and psychological torture of its characters. When Agnes' two sisters visit the plot thickens as her pain transcends physicality despite the comfort she receives from her maid as all women are forced to confront the shadows that bind them.As one character's pain affects and reflects the others' the director takes the audience on a downward spiral of resentment, hopelessness, and agony. The film's poetic cinematography with it's commendable use of the close-up only heightens the characters' suffering as their beauty contrasts with their exterior and interior reality. Watching this film feels like staring at a well composed painting in motion where each gesture and each moment, whether it be a moment of constant screaming in complete and absolute pain or a moment of silence, sets the viewer in an inevitable state of contemplation.