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List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780780024038
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780024036
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 19, 2001
Running Time: 91 minutes
Sales Rank: 31718
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1972
Editorial Review:
Description:
Legendary director Ingmar Bergman creates a testament to the strength of the soul-and a film of absolute power. Karin and Maria come to the aid of their dying sister, Agnes, but jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness come before empathy. Agnes, tortured by cancer, transcends the pettiness of her sisters' concerns to remember moments of being-moments that Bergman, with the help of Academy Award®-winning cinematographer Sven Nykvist, translates into pictures of staggering beauty and unfathomable horror.
Amazon.com essential video:
Ingmar Bergman's great 1972 film is about the elemental things: death and dying, sex, injury, repression, and the body as a fount of sustenance. No wonder Bergman chooses to focus on female characters, in this case three sisters--one of whom is dying of tuberculosis--and a maid who is the only one capable of caring for the ill woman. The film is noteworthy for many reasons, not least of all an interesting camera style that marries beautiful imagery with an anxious frame. That tension perfectly suits the overlapping psychodramas of the piece, but this is a movie that ultimately pushes beyond the particulars of these characters' virtues or neuroses to a greater mystery, one that somehow sustains our existence while slowly taking it away. A landmark film. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Family and servants, death and dying
It is quiet September day and we are inside the house, sparsely but beautifully arranged. There are four women in a house: Agnes, Maria, Karen and Anna. The first three are sisters, while Anna is a housekeeper. They are together because Agnes is dying; she is sick with cancer and women are keeping vigil in attempt to make her last days more comfortable. In between doctor's visits and attacks of unbearable pain, Agnes is drawing and writing her journal. She adores Anna's attention and the closer ... Read More
Rating: - The passion of Agnes
The more I watch Bergman's "Cries and Whispers," the more struck I am that it's really a cinematic passion of Christ. Bergman, of course, repudiated his Lutheran upbringing, and claims to have exorcised himself of its influence through crafting the so-called "first trilogy" of films ("Through a Glass Darkly," "Winter Light," and "The Silence"). Exorcised or not, though, Bergman returns to themes drawn from the Christian mythos again and again in his films, especially the notion of sacrifice.
... Read More
Rating: - A House of Pain!
After viewing this one time, you might ask yourself ...what the hell was all that about??? It clearly leaves one feeling uneasy and misunderstood.
The first noticeable thing is how Bergmann sets the mood with colors, first the innocence and purity in the white dresses, then fiery and demonic red for walls and carpet, to the brooding and gloomy mood with black. The creation of the Victorian era, the striking furniture in the manor house, to the period hairstyles of the cast was an excellent ... Read More
Rating: - The Artistry of Ingmar Bergman
If ever there was a film that literally depicts the title of a film, Ingmar Bergman's 1972 CRIES AND WHISPERS deserves that distinction because of the painful and agonizing howls that come from several of the actors. The film is extremely dramatic and shows Bergman's filmmaking trait of portraying the human condition. There are several themes within the film, which involve masochistic tendencies and gender roles, but the film would not be a Bergman film without religion, which he subtly shows in several ... Read More
Rating: - The horror within
At first glance, there might not seem to be much identifiable terror in this story. The relaxed intangibles fail to produce any moments of heightened drama. The tension never erupts. Not an abundance of blood or gore either. So is this really horror?
I say yes yes YES! There is a simmering level of uneasiness and even hatred between these sisters as death looms over the household. One of them is dying of tuberculosis, and you would think this family tragedy would pull them together. That's not ... Read More
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