Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and
Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when
working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can
discover… Ingmar Bergman
There’s no doubt that Ingmar Bergman sought out the
inconvenient truths of our existence and, unblinking, showed us at our weakest
and most human. As he sat beside Sven Nykvist’s camera, he looked at his
performers straight in the eye as they acted to interpret his writing in ways
that even he couldn’t have imagined, sometimes and perhaps often. For all the
talk of authorship, he needed actors he could trust to rise to the occasion and
go beyond whether through instinct, training or dazzling natural ability.
In one of his most stunning works, he brought together
three of his acting muses and created a four-hander of such force that it’s
more than capable of bruising audiences today. This restored Cries and
Whispers is being released across country to mark its 50th anniversary as well as forming part of this
month’s season of Liv Ullmann films, which, launched by the great woman herself,
dominates April on the Southbank. Ullmann talked of the joys of our being able
to, once again, experience film collectively and, in the case of this one, it’s
good to have people you care about with you.
Bergman asks, are familial ties enough, does love come
unconditionally and even at the end, can we still pull away from totally
committing to others. The story was inspired by a persistent dream the director
had of four women dressed in white in a red room and there’s a striking use of
colour with each character framed in close-up saturated with red light. Red for
love and fear; fight or flight, denial, anger and acceptance? All of these
things, for those caught in the most difficult moment of their lives. Bergman
wrote in his book Images that “red represents for me the interior of
the soul. When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadow
floating in the air like blue smoke—a huge-winged creature, half bird, half
fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red.”
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| Ladies in red... (oh, come on!) |
Bergman also wanted to write a tribute to his mother yet
the lead character who carries the most grace, is called Agnes, and her eldest
sister Karin – his mother’s name – is full of confusion and regret. All of the women
represented parts of his mother’s character though so, as is usual with Bergman,
nothing is black or white.
Agnes is played by the wonderful Harriet Andersson, one of
the director’s earliest collaborators and almost twenty years after Summer
with Monica, in early middle age and offering a quite terrifying portrayal of
a woman confronting her imminent death. Karin has cancer and not long to live, and
Anderson’s performance is intense, her eyes wide with the adrenal certainty of
her certain demise, she cries out but is far braver than she could ever know.
If you’ve reached an age of morbid understanding, something you can only live
through, it’s impossible to not respond without being mindful of your own fears,
your own enduring grief.
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| Harriet Andersson |
Agnes is cared for by her maid, Anna wonderfully played by Kari Sylwan, who’s
interior responses provide some of the more comforting moments of the story in
which Agnes’ sisters are both constrained by an inability to commit to their
sister’s final moment. This of course is wonderful grist to the mill for actors
of the quality of Ingrid Thulin as “uptight” Karin and Liv Ullmann as “immature”
Maria… things are far more complicated than those two operative words suggest
and the watched hangs onto their every word and action looking for the simple
truths most other directors would use to flavour this narrative.
The story is told in past and present tense as well as
fantasy so it is very much like a dream floating gently off the screen,
especially with those anchors of emotional certainty removed and these two
sisters struggling to connect with each other and themselves. There’s no doubt
their love for their sister, they wait in the red room adjoining her bedroom,
concerned at every cry as the doctor assures them that Agnes is getting close
to the end but they’re held back by denial and grief. There’s nothing unnatural,
it’s important to say that as this is film for thought, the cinema of
self-reflection as we all have to confront this reality once life resumes
outside in the night and daylight.
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| Ingrid Thulin |
In silent film there was an obsession with “photographing
thought” with few greater exponents than Bergman’s mentor Victor Sjöström, and
indeed Ingmar himself with the aid of his incredible performers. There’s an
intimacy that reflected the fact that three of the leads were long-term
collaborators with the director and there’s also the presence of two of his
daughters, who both play Maria’s daughter at different ages, Linn Ullmann and
Lena Bergman. Liv Ullmann also plays Maria’s mother in flashback, adding to the
compressed family feeling… what was it Philip Larkin said about parents?
As Maria faces the end, her sisters face each other and
their failed relationships with two thoroughly inadequate husbands, Karin’s Fredrik
(Georg Årlin), an officious older man and Maria’s Joakim (Henning Moritzen) who
is emotionally disconnected too. Karin is so repulsed by Frederik she mutilates
herself to avoid having sex with him whilst Joakim tried to kill himself after learning
of her affair with Doctor David (Erland Josephson). Needless to say, both are
still around as their wives face the family crisis.
As the priest (Anders Ek) says when Agnes finally succumbs,
she had more faith than him and as the truehearted Anna reads her mistress’ diary,
she learns of her capacity for happiness which, as for us all, maybe only
fleeting but is life’s greatest achievement after all.
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| Ingrid Thulin and Kari Sylwan |
Cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, captures every thought and
whisper and the film is beautiful to view. He deserved his Oscar and this film
deserves to be seen on the big screen so, I urge you to head to the Southbank and
elsewhere for the full experience. Few films are this heartfelt or as richly
rewarding.
Details of the 50th Anniversary re-release screenings are on the BFI site.
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| Liv Ullmann |
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