Four women dressed in white in a mansion painted red... haunted by whispers and cries.
Overview
As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.2/10
IMDb: 7.9/10
Letterboxd: 4.21/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
TMDB: 7.9/10
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Production
Cinematograph AB, Svenska Filminstitutet
Cast
Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, Kari Sylwan, Harriet Andersson, Erland Josephson, Georg Årlin, Anders Ek, Henning Moritzen, Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Sandell, Ingrid Bergman, Linn Ullmann, Inga Gill, Greta Johansson, Marianne Aubert, Rossana Mariano, Malin Gjörup, Lena Bergman, Ann-Christin Lobråten, Börje Lundh
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A devastating chamber drama of grief, guilt, and bodily suffering, staged with extraordinary visual control and emotional intensity. It is austere, confrontational, and often unbearable, but also one of cinema’s great meditations on mortality and the failure of love.
Best for
viewers who want intense art-house drama
fans of psychological and existential cinema
people interested in grief, death, and family cruelty
viewers drawn to bold color design and formalism
Skip if
you want a plot-driven or comforting film
you dislike bleak, emotionally punishing stories
you prefer naturalistic acting and understated style
you are sensitive to illness, death, or bodily distress
Overview
Cries and Whispers is Bergman at his most severe and most controlled, turning a dying woman’s final days into a study of isolation, resentment, and the desperate need for human touch. The film’s red interiors, hushed pacing, and piercing close-ups create an atmosphere that feels less like a house than a wound.
Worth noting
What makes it endure is not just its misery, but the precision with which it observes how people fail one another. The sisters’ emotional evasions, the servants’ quiet compassion, and Agnes’s suffering all register as part of the same moral landscape: love is possible here, but never easy, and often arrives too late.
Bottom line
It is not an easy watch, and it is not meant to be. But for viewers willing to sit with its pain, it offers a rare kind of cinematic honesty: grief rendered not as catharsis, but as a physical and spiritual condition.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Wes (4.5★) · 3184 likes
watching an ingmar bergman movie while you're already in a state of emotional vulnerability is like squeezing lemon juice on your hand thats been bitten off by a shark while youre being set on fire and the shark is coming back for you and he somehow has a gun now
kailey (4.5★) · 1282 likes
red is the color of the walls reflected against skin in the candlelight which is the color of blood dripping down your clothes which is the color of your dress as you lean forward with your enigmatic smile which is the color of your anger and your hate which is the color of death which is the color of a small spark between the only two people who can reach out and touch.
(white is the color of her face… more
Lucy (4★) · 1133 likes
“come what may, this is happiness”
grief is so potent. it brings people together with a purpose, some more selflessly than others. and it rips them apart, exposing the truth, however ugly, however foul. bergman always makes me sob
liam f (4.5★) · 955 likes
why be happy when you can watch this film instead
Merkin Muffley (5★) · 732 likes
Literally nothing is more relatable to me than saying "it's all a web of lies" and then shoving a shard of glass into my vagina and smearing the blood across my face