A scene analysis of 'Cries And Whispers' directed by Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman's 'Cries and Whispers' is a film about people who are incapable of expressing their feelings for one another. Here is a breakdown of scenes from the movie.
Title 1 (1:23-9:50) (8:27) Stop after Anna starts a fire
Summary
The opening scene shows us the outside of the 19th century manor—the mists, the grounds. Then the inside of the manor where we see clocks striking off seconds. Then, we see Maria played by Liv Ullman asleep outside of the room of her dying sister Agnes played by Harriet Andersson. Harriet awakens and draws the curtains of a window to let the light in. Then she sits to write in her journal that she is in pain and that her sisters are taking turns watching her. Karin relieves Maria. Agnes slept peacefully and didn’t disturb Maria’s sleep.
Analysis
Death pervades the 1st scene: the outside of the manor is cold and shrouded in mists; the inside of the house is quiet and empty marked by the ticking of many clocks coinciding with Agnes’ imminent death; then we see the pale white face of Agnes with her eyes closed and hear her struggling to breathe in time with the clocks. We see her sister Maria in separate room, separate from each other as we are born alone and die alone. Agnes then opens the window to show a vast, empty landscape marked by autumn and dying. Then we meet the principal characters: Anna, the maid and sisters Karin and Maria. Anna’s function in the film is foreshadowed by Karin telling her to start a fire. Throughout the film, Anna is Agnes’ sole comfort.
Red is also a pervasive motif the film associates with the pain and the burden of silence which Agnes—who acts as a Christ-like symbol in the film—bears for everyone in the film.
footnote (s): from wikipedia
Title 2 (12:31-31:20) (18:36) Stop after Joakim attempts suicide
Summary
The scent of a rose brings back painful memories for Agnes. Of the parties they had every twelfth night and how her beautiful mother scolded her yet played and laughed with her sisters. Of how sad and lonely her mother looked walking alone and of how her mother sat alone in the drawing room.
The doctor stops by to check Agnes. As he is leaving, Maria seduces him. But the doctor resists her and leaves. Maria hears whispers and recalls an affair she had with the doctor several years earlier. She remembers how her husband Joakim tried unsuccessfully to kill himself because of her unfaithfulness.
Analysis
As a child, Agnes’ relationship with her mother is distant but as a result of her mother’s indifference Agnes’ is able to empathize with her mother’s loneliness and isolation. The shots of the mother walking alone against the vastness of the estate illustrates her loneliness and isolation.
The theme of warmth is expressed by the manner in which the doctor treats Agnes, placing his hands on her stomach, his ear against her chest, and touching her face until she clasps his hands and brings them to her chest, holding them there. This scene captures the essence of what this film is about. It is not that we, as humans, won’t suffer in this life, it is having someone there to share our sufferings with. The doctor cannot help Agnes but his closeness and warmth comforts her. Likewise, the maid Anna cannot remove Agnes’ pain but she is there throughout the film to share her warmth and provide comfort despite the fact that death is inevitable for all of us.
This scene ends with Maria attempting to seduce the doctor. In comparison with the doctor and Agnes moments before, Maria also seeks a kind of warmth from him, a flame she tries to rekindle from an affair they had once before.
In the flashback, the doctor shows Maria herself in a mirror, reading the lines in her face like sentences in a book: she is beautiful, selfish, hungry, artificial, and indifferent. In other words, her inner self is becoming more obvious with age—powerful scene! Her indifference and selfishness is what drives her husband to try to kill himself.
But there’s a poetic moment before his attempted suicide where he presses his palm gently against his wife’s face and then his daughter’s face as if to ask where her innocence has gone—great direction by Bergman!
Title 3 (42:15-101:38) (19:23) Stop after Karin smears blood on her face.
Summary
Karin dies and relatives stop by to pay their respects. The priest does the eulogy and afterwards admits that he and Karin often talked and that her faith was greater than his. Some years later, Karin and her husband stayed for some months at the manor. They were both pursuing diplomatic careers and their relationship was cold and formal. Once as they were having supper, sitting at opposite ends of a long table, Frederik asked her to provide him company and she said no. She asked him, reluctantly, if he wanted coffee or if wanted to go to bed and he said he wanted to go to bed and, simultaneously as he said this, a wineglass shattered and spilled red wine on the white tablecloth. He got up and told her he’d be in the bedroom waiting on her. When he left, she picked up one of the broken pieces of glass and kept it.
Undressing and preparing for bed, Karin used the piece of glass she kept on her private parts. Then she went in the bedroom, got in the bed and showed him what she did to herself and how far she would go to avoid intimacy with him.
Analysis
The eulogy by the priest sums up Agnes’ role in the film:
“Should it be that you gathered up our suffering in agony into your body. Should it be that you bore with you this hardship through death. Should it be that you meet with God as you come to that other land. Should it be that you find His countenance turned toward you then. Should it be that you know the language to speak so this God may hear and understand…”
Agnes’ cries spoke for everyone’s inability to express their feelings and pain. In one of the rare instances of openness in the film, the priest confesses to his lack of faith in comparison to Agnes. After the eulogy, whispers take Karin back to when she and Fredrik lived in the manor and the extreme she went to to avoid intimacy with him. Their marriage was struck out of convenience, not love. This scene shows the emotional isolation of Karin’s character and her inability to be intimate with anyone, even her husband.
Title 4 (1:14:21-1:24:20) (9:59) Stop after red fade out following Anna cradling Agnes in bed
Summary
Though Agnes is dead, her body remains in the house and in the bed where she died. Anna, Karin, and Maria are in the next room. Whispers awaken Anna but Karin and Maria don’t hear them. The whispers draw Anna into Agnes’ room where Agnes, still in bed, has tears running down her face. She asks Anna to get Karin who confesses her hatred and refuses to comfort her dead sister. Agnes, then, asks Anna to get Maria who also refuses to give her comfort, flying out the room screaming. Agnes comforts Anna.
Analysis
In this supernatural scene, both sisters take off their masks and reveal their true feelings for Agnes. Karin returns from the dead to ask for her sisters’ comfort but is denied by both. As children Karin and Maria were favored by their mother over Agnes who was isolated and, as a result could empathize with her mother’s loneliness. Their mother only showed Karin and Maria the mask of happiness and indifference and never showed them her real face, the loneliness and isolation she felt which Agnes saw. In lying to Maria and Karin in this way, their mother hurt them by only letting them see the good side of life and not the not so good side of life that would have helped them develop empathy for others. She also taught them to withhold their feelings instead of expressing them. Maria and Karin share their mother’s essence which is why Agnes loves them so much and also, like their mothers, both women provide no comfort or warmth to Agnes.
But Anna, who suffers quietly under those who look down on her, is able to comfort and relate to Agnes’ loneliness. This scene ends with the most iconic image from the film as Anna uses the warmth of her partly naked body to warm Agnes.
Title 5 (1:28:40-end)
Summary
After the funeral, Anna reads from Agnes’ diary recalling an autumn day when the sisters strolled the grounds. Agnes recalls the time as a happy one in which she feels very content and close to her sisters.
Analysis
This scene is crucial to understanding Maria and Karin and why they refuse to comfort Agnes. In a flashback earlier in the film, Agnes recounts how their mother hid her true feelings from Maria and Karin whom she bred —without knowing it—to be insensitive and selfish. Therefore, the reason they seem so happy and together in this flashback is because Agnes is in good health. But it is when Agnes’ health takes a turn for the worse do Karin and Maria show their selfishness and insensitivity—their true faces. The sisters are typical of ‘fair weather’ friends—those who come around when you are OK but avoid you when you need them. This is why both women shun Agnes when she comes back from the dead and asks for warmth. In hiding her true feelings from Maria and Karin, their mother deprived them of developing humanity and empathy that would have enabled them to comfort Agnes. Anna can comfort Agnes because like Agnes, she is treated like an outsider and she also lost her daughter to an illness.
