Cries and Whispers

Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop, 1972) is Ingmar Bergman's Swedish drama you can watch online on iFILM — with Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin and Harriet Andersson as three sisters gathered in a family estate while one of them, Agnes, dies slowly of cancer. Ninety-one minutes set almost entirely inside rooms painted the deep red that Bergman described as the interior of the human soul.

Agnes' dying pulls the other two sisters into the house, but Karin and Maria arrive with a kind of sealed-off composure — grief performed rather than felt. The woman who actually stays present with Agnes is Anna, the household servant, played by Kari Sylwan. Bergman gives no explanation for this inversion. It simply sits there, uncomfortable and exact.

Sven Nykvist's cinematography — close, suffocating, lit to make the red walls breathe — took the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The film received four more Oscar nominations that year, including Best Picture and Best Director. Bergman considered it among his most personal. It's not easy viewing; it's the kind of film that resurfaces in your thoughts days later. Stream Cries and Whispers (1972) online on iFILM.