Cries and Whispers

Since this was, admittedly, the first Ingmar Bergman film I had ever seen, the incredible cinematography and devastating subject matter came as a pleasant shock. Looking at "Cries and Whispers" now, one would never dream it was made in the seventies - the images are unbelievably sharp, and the 19th-century costumes are utterly convincing.
I thought the fades to red between flashbacks were particularly effective. The color seems to bring out the pain the characters' memories evoke--as do the striking close-up shots of each character before and after she remembers.
The silence in the movie, of course, speaks louder than its words. When Agnes gasps and howls in pain, her suffering is rendered all the more awful and palpable by the aura of silence around her, symbolic of her sisters' coldness. In this film, a whisper is loud. Ticking clocks are deafening. But the expressions on the actors' faces, unsupported by dialogue, convey everything the sisters fail to speak.

~Cassie Jensen