About

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.

Cries and Whispers will screen from an archival 35mm film print.

Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers is soaked in some of the most sumptuous red ever committed to celluloid. From the walls and carpets of the stately manor in which the film takes place to the dresses of the sisters that occupy it, red saturates the film's aesthetic. Bergman would tellingly note in his screenplay for the film: "ever since my childhood I have pictured the inside of the soul as a moist membrane in shades of red". It is fitting then that Cries and Whispers is a film of such high passion; it is predicated on love and loss, memory and death, familial bonds and collapsed relationships. It is an ensemble drama in which the visit of two women to their dying sister leads to the spill over of intense emotions.

After several years of receiving increasingly tepid responses to his films, Cries and Whispers marked a return to international acclaim for Bergman. The film received five Academy Award nominations and won for Sven Nykvist's stunning colour cinematography. The main cast of actresses portraying the sisters and the estate's maid – Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullumann, and Kari Sylwan – all give powerful performances that go to far-reaching emotional extremes.

This is a luxurious, yet deeply moving film, and it remains one of the director's greatest achievements.

M | Mature themes, Brief incidental nudity

Cries and Whispers also screens on Fri 10 March at 7.45pm