Cries and Whispers (Criterion Collection)

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES include: new 2K digital restoration, introduction by Ingmar Bergman from 2001, new interview with actor Harriet Andersson, new video essay on the film’s visuals, behind-the-scenes footage, and Ingmar Bergman: Reflections on Life, Death, and Love with Erland Josephson (2000), a 52-minute interview with Bergman and his longtime collaborator, and more. This existential wail of a drama from Ingmar Bergman (Wild Strawberries) concerns two sisters, Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), keeping vigil for a third, Agnes (Harriet Andersson), who is dying of cancer and can find solace only in the arms of a beatific nurse (Kari Sylwan). An intensely felt film that may be Bergman's most striking formal experiment, Cries and Whispers (which won an Oscar for the extraordinary color photography of Sven Nykvist) is a powerful depiction of human behavior in the face of death, positioned on the borders between reality and nightmare, tranquility and terror.