Directors: INGMAR BERGMAN

"If all is imperfect in this imperfect world, then love is most imperfect in its perfect imperfection."

DET SJUNDE INSEGLET (1957)

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
Length: 96 minutes



Undoubtedly, Ingmar Bergman is one of the most genius, brilliant, allegoric, symbolic, complex and intelligent auters in the entire history of cinema. He was the one who helped Swedish cinema to rise out of the blue and acquire a characteristic style of its own, but it was in the year of 1957 when he received complete international attention through two of his first and most financially successful films: Det Sjunde Inseglet and Smultronstället (1957). Det Sjunde Inseglet immediately belongs to the most superior category of cinema. Its extraordinary inventiveness, visual style and apocalyptic perspective has been several times imitated, but never duplicated. Never before had cinema questioned the true essence of life, the existence of God and the negative consequences of religion towards its society when seen as the opium of the masses in such a straightforward manner. With an extraordinary cast that includes the Swedish cinema legends Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Bengt Ekerot and Gunnar Björnstrand, not to mention one of the scariest and most sensational antagonists ever portrayed in celluloid, Det Sjunde Inseglet has the power to shatter the already established code of ethics, to attack and criticize the monstrous consequences of misleading religion and even to modify the perspective towards life itself.

A man named Antonius Block and his squire return to their homeland from the Crusades only to find the country completely devastated by the infamous Black Plague. In case this wasn't enough, Block has an encounter with Death who tells him that his time is already up. With the mere and obvious purpose of buying time, Block challenges Death to a game of chess that will ultimately decide the fate of the knight while he is given the chance to return to his wife after ten years and to question the meaning of life, the senselessness of death and the very existence of God. Director Ingmar Bergman was nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival of 1957, which unfairly lost against William Wyler for his film Friendly Persuasion (1956). However, Bergman won the Jury Special Prize, which tied with Andrzej Wajda's Kanal (1957). He also won a Silver Ribbon for Best Director - Foreign Film at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in the year of 1961.

The title Det Sjunde Inseglet is a direct reference towards the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelations of The Holy Bible, citing the text during the first minutes and just before the shocking, implicit ending. To cite such literary source may imply a context of apocalyptic perdition and existential confusion. The character of Antonius Block, masterly interpreted by Max von Sydow, would be completely remade in Andrey Tarkovsky's timeless, religious masterpiece Andrey Rublyov (1966). He is a man whose faith in God is suddenly shattered into pieces because of the catastrophic environment that always surrounded him. Nonetheless, it is this same environment the one that starts to build and ultimately experience a highly religious way of life. Chapels are being constructed while people suffer a destructive plague which origins remained unknown by that time. The easiest and most logical explanation such degraded and increasingly violent society found for such tragedy was the very plague being a direct punishment of God for the sins of the human being. And so begins the personal journey of self-discovery of Block exactly at the time when, ironically, death has already assured its victory.

Det Sjunde Inseglet possesses an extraordinary cinematographic work by Gunnar Fischer. The camera catches and consequently attracts all of the symbols and elements that beautifully decorate the mysterious and unpredictable development of the plot. From the vast ocean to the interior of the chapels and the breathtaking landscapes through which a group of unusually funny travelling players go through, Block starts to gather pieces of a possible meaning of life that may acquire a more significant meaning if rather strong emotional connections start to be worked on. It is interesting how, throughout decades of moviemaking, directors have given a somewhat surreal and symbolic connotation when travelling players are used as either main or secondary characters. In this case, they serve the mere function of the protagonists' epiphany. One of them swears to have visions of the Virgin Mary while Block is seeing Death, so they could be interpreted as the counterpart of an imminent and unavoidable fate. Despite its relatively short running time, enough character development is offered, visionary sequences, partial surrealism and religious imagery is offered in order to magically expand it. Bergman's direction is absolutely phenomenal and instead of mistakenly resorting to exaggerated grandiloquence, he decided to treat the story with such delicacy that one may even feel that it must be analyzed like the tenderest physical features of a rose.

Det Sjunde Inseglet may also be subject to an escapist analysis. It is an essay on the easily corrupted soul and the most negative outcomes when external facts utterly deteriorate any possible optimistic perspective. Its existentialist subject matter may ultimately lead to either a depressing reaction from the audience or to a cathartic one. Bergman's ethereal and heavenly screenplay, which was also based on his play, contains outstandingly surprising and hidden layers of wisdom. The most typical and somewhat ridiculous faults of the human being are contrasted with what seems to be the end of mankind... or so they perceive it. It also pays a strong attention to detail, from having conversations of the importance of family relationships to the normally devastating hardships of failed romances. The performances are phenomenal, from a comical theatre actor to an idealist, violent, but undeniably charming squire. The film slowly reveals several moments of brilliance, like if the screenplay allowed a gorgeous piece of art to blossom under the influence irradiated by the power of darkness. Such plot is remarkably unpredictable, thus enhancing the power of the final conclusion: eternal wandering and never-ending doom. The philosophical material of the film is overabundant and it has the sheer capacity of strengthening the faith in every single religious man, not to mention a possible questioning of the atheists' point of view and take on life.

Ingmar Bergman has achieved to create one of the best films of all time, but the description doesn't end there. It has been subject to multiple references and critical discussions about the ideas depicted, and although its temporary controversy and its depressing content may pretend to be spiritually dangerous, Det Sjunde Inseglet is arguably the most original and visionary adaptation of the Book of Revelations that introduced the condemnation to every single non-believer person. The character of the Grim Reaper, of course, is not real. It is an illusion of our hopeless attempts to achieve redemption because of our past actions with brand new ones. If we make a list of the things that remain at the end, we would be definitely shocked to see that if such things can be written down, they would be negative and disastrous.

100/100

"If I have been feeling worried or sad during the day, I have a habit of recalling scenes from childhood to calm me. So it was this evening."

SMULTRONSTÄLLET (1957)

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Genre: Drama
Length: 91 minutes



Ingmar Bergman is one of the few filmmakers within the history of cinema that achieved the unachievable goal of directing two of the best films of all time in the same year, not to mention that he also managed to transform the remote Swedish cinema into an internationally visionary one. With Smultronstället, he creates the counterpart of Det Sjunde Inseglet (1957). Whereas one film focused on the humanly obstinate questionings about the existence of God and the meaning of life and death, this film takes such plot from an imminent death to a necessary reconstruction of life itself. The influence of Smultronstället is immense, but its vision and filmmaking quality still remain unparalleled and unrepeatable. Avoiding filmic clichés, the depiction of a flatly boring character and nonsense events, Bergman masterfully conglomerates the elements that are universally accepted as the most relevant ones to be analyzed in the existence of oneself and makes an outstanding, visually beautiful and spiritually compelling masterpiece of only ninety-one minutes long.

Doctor Isak Borg is a seventy-three-year-old man who lives in solitude and who is about to be invited by destiny to a journey of epiphanies and self-discovery after having lived a life marked by coldness, loneliness, intolerance and hatred. During his journey, he will have to face the mistakes that led him to his actual state of being while revisiting old and new relatives and reencountering several acquaintances. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay ? Written Directly for the Screen, ludicrously losing it against Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959). However, director Ingmar Bergman won the Golden Berlin Bear and Victor Sjöström won the FIPRESCI Prize for the body of his works and his performance in the movie at the Berlin International Film Festival of 1958. Ingmar Bergman also won a Silver Ribbon for Best Director ? Foreign Film at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists of 1960 and the Italian Film Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival of 1958 under the category of Parallel Sections.

Smultronstället is the most complete and fully-developed essay on disillusionment and existentialism, featuring one of the best leading performances of all time, thanks to the highly talented actor Victor Sjöström. His character is exactly the one that inspired the principal one in Pixar's Up (2009): both are seventy-three years old, both are bespectacled and curmudgeon men who are about to begin an unforgettable and emotionally striking journey, both have spent a life of solitude because of the personalities they executed in their surrounding society, both are convinced to suffer an attitude transition because of external events. However, Ingmar Bergman's second perfect masterpiece is one of the most challenging character studies ever committed to celluloid and has the capacity of transforming even the people?s lives. It is the very behavioral transition the character suffers the one that may culminate in inspiration and self-reflection because of its thought-provoking nature. Bibi Andersson, who plays the character of Sara, Isak?s daughter, made an outstanding acting work as well.

Most of the dramatic and ultimately cathartic cinematic power of Smultronstället is originated from the psychological similarity that Isak Borg may share with the viewer. He is a man who lives encapsulated in a sphere of imagined independence and human intolerance. Being based on these characteristics, the floor under the feet of this man had to be shaken. The event that triggers the bomb of his transformation is an extraordinarily well-shot, scarily mysterious and unpredictable surrealistic dream sequence in which he finds himself walking through empty streets and encountering faceless, anthropomorphic beings and handless clocks. Suddenly, a coffin that was being transported by a pair of horses falls right in front of him. The coffin is finally opened, revealing his own corpse, causing an absolute sensation of terror in him. When he wakes up, his journey finally begins. What was initially meant to be a trip towards Lund University for receiving an honorary award after fifty years of medical practice ends up being a challenging experience that involves total awareness of his current physical and emotional personality and a possible realization of insufficiency.

Ingmar Bergman wrote the remarkably poetic script while he was in hospital suffering from gastric ulcers. Moreover, the original concept came to Bergman?s mind when he drove to Uppsala, the place where he had been born, and stood outside his grandmother?s house wondering how it would be like to enter the house and to find out that everything has been the same just as it was during his childhood. The idea of ?realistically opening a door and entering a specific stage of our lives for then opening another door so we could come back to the present reality? was a striking idea for him. On a personal note, I find this idea considerably challenging and nostalgic since, at some point in my life, I reflected over the same concept several times after the desire of changing several mistakes I had committed in the past went through my mind. Despite the film working on death?s inevitability and the humankind?s unstoppable mortality, everything is irreversible, and Smultronstället offers the wise conclusion that the only and most adequate solution for obtaining redemption is to correct our faults, to see life as a nonstop river of events and consequences, to gather the pieces of the past and to work on the present.

Gunnar Fischer is, once again, the film?s cinematographer, offering a very-well calculated family atmosphere and using the magic of black-and-white images in all of its visual glory. The film?s nature somewhat demanded a certain attention towards the musical score, and the direction by Bergman is wonderfully delicate. What may be a cultural and immortal piece of entertainment filmmaking is actually a compelling study of the human condition. The bubble of stubborn doom must be broken and we, as an avid cinematic audience, are asked to read between lines. Symbols are scattered throughout with troubling dreams, but the ethereal beauty that Berman has imposed throughout Smultronstället make of this cerebral ride more of a literal reference towards the weakness of the soul and the fortitude of the spirit. Condemning materialism and exalting the social coexistence and the love obtained through the family, this is one of the best directed dramas in the entire history of moviemaking. Its introspectiveness, its vibrant filming locations and its decoration with the aroma of recalled wild strawberries restore the faith in mankind.

100/100

"You are not alone, Mareta. And God alone bears our guilt.

JUNGFRUKÄLLAN (1960)

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Genre: Crime / Drama
Length: 89 minutes



Like a divine allegory, Ingmar Bergman directs his second "medieval drama", a film plagued with mystical symbolisms of spiritual fortitude and the performance of personal justice against unfair external events. Thanks to his prior internationally famous films Det Sjunde Inseglet (1957) and Smultronstället (1957), the genius auteur raised the bar for Swedish filmmaking. With the disturbingly powerful Jungfrukällan, he was solidifying his reputation and constructing a vastly admirable filmography. Considering the dramatism and literary sentimentalism that would characterize his style some time later, this masterpiece stands out and can be considered as the last symbolic testament of the director. Despite being subject to an exploitative and so-called hideous remake directed by Wes Craven titled The Last House on the Left (1972), and to a second highly formulaic Hollywood remake by Dennis Iliadis released in 2009, Bergman's testament to the loss of purity in the essence of mankind still maintains a meaningful brutality hidden beneath its layers of complexity and provocative visual beauty. It is a remarkable drama of impeccably groundbreaking proportions and, more than belonging to a surrealism branch, it can be defined as a heart-wrenching metaphor of destructive nature.

Set in the tranquil 14th-century Sweden, this strong movie tells the story of Karin, the favorite, virginal and gorgeously-looking daughter of a family of religious peasants. Töre and Märeta, her parents, send her and her pregnant stepsister on the day of Our Lady of Virgins to a distant church so she can deliver some candles. After having invoked a pagan curse before the beginning of the journey, the stepsister convinces Karin to leave her alone so she can rest in a flat, so Karin continues her journey alone. In the way, Karin meets three shepherd brothers and invites them to share her food. Latterly, the goat herders brutally rape and kill her while the stepsister witnesses the events without taking any significant action. Finally, not lacking a sense of irony, the plot takes the three criminals, who were looking for shelter, to the house of the already dead woman, unleashing a devastating and supernatural sequence of events. The film received two Academy Award nominations in 1961 for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, winning the first Oscar and losing the latter against The Facts of Life (1946). Director Ingmar Bergman was nominated for a Golden Palm, losing the award to Federico Fellini for the film La Dolce Vita (1960), but received the Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival. He also won two Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Foreign Language Film Director and Best Foreign Language Film.

Is this film a tribute? Despite the fact that one cannot expect a straightforward reply, if a particular viewer or critic decides to answer to the question positively, the outcome is exceptional. Bergman discusses in the incredibly short running time of 89 minutes the eternal topics of virginity, religion, sex, family, Catholicism, internal peace, physical and internal beauty, divine justice and human vengeance. Jungfrukällan serves the audacious task of serving as a fable stuffed with religious symbolisms and graphic representations of amoral actions. Karin is the favorite daughter of a family, yet her snobbish and delicate personality abounds through noticeable facial expressions and a loafing attitude of opportunism. In order to create the demanded character that must represent her counterpart, a half sister appears in the role of the envious and unintentionally evil one. The parents are the faithful, theatrical incarnations of catholic purity and the admirably objective strength provided by faith. Due to the disturbing nature of the film, God is suggested as an implicit, omniscient character that executes justice among the characters portrayed and makes a breathtaking miracle in the climax of the plot, an event that unarguably stands for internal rebirth, redemption and the start of a new hope.

Religion is not suggested as a blind means of existentialist escapism. Like Andrei Tarkovsky always suggested since Andrey Rublyov (1966) and Bergman himself had stated since the making of Det Sjunde Inseglet (1957), the will of God involves the submission of the soul to his divine and ultimately incomprehensible purposes. The departure of a loved one is maximized through the violent and painful assassination of what is the female protagonist during the first part of the film. In order to add irony to the troubling atmosphere of Jungfrukällan, the criminals, instead of returning to the "scene of the crime", ask for hospitality in the house of Karin. When Töre cannot stand the emotional suffering derived from the realization of the truth, he decides to take vengeance with his own hands instead of asking justice from God. Therefore, the second half ensues, displaying assassination. Should we empathize with Töre's final decision, or should we raise our right hands and put his violent explosion of rage into questioning? All of this considering that, at some point, the evilness of the half sister disappears and, confessing her guts out, accepts guilt and symbolizes an already unobtainable redemption, regretting her neutral participation during the horrifying murder of Karin. Consequently, the film does not exalt the human condition to a level of innocence and imperfection; rather, it diminishes the human race in morality and importance, actually making the audience to question its priorities and the acceptance of the incomprehensible and divine purposes of a superior will. At first glance, the structure of the story and the "coincidental" events that take place throughout and actually not coincidental. They are orchestrated by a bigger force that can either distort the everyday world with horrible consequences, or can bring peace to the soul with the oblivion of the sins of man and creating a watery spring from a dry land in the middle of nature.

In order to contrast and ultimately lessen the shock value that the film caused back in the 60s and, surprisingly enough, still causes today, a wonderfully constructed and atmospherically brilliant art direction has been built, decorating it with a religious costume design and a musical score that reminds us of past, pastoral times. Giant Swedish star Max von Sydow is as talented as he had always been in the past, almost assimilating the flesh-and-bone version of a Greek sculpture, equally vengeful and paternal as an infuriated animal. Birgitta Pettersson is, quite probably, the most beautiful actress to ever grace the European screen. In the same way a film's lack of substance and plot should not be replaced with special effects, her physical beauty does not replace her acting abilities. Perhaps it is this beauty the one that is quite often perceived as a stereotype for virginity, consequently suggesting the idea that only attractive appearances can symbolize a state of physical and emotional purity. That is a misleading statement. Bergman is a multifaceted director of several talents and artistic purposes. With the most memorable birth of a "virgin spring", we are reminded of how extreme measures and unbearable events are the only means we finally accept the fact that life does not belong to our hands. 1960 introduced a decade of cinematic shocks and controversial scandals (Psycho, Jungfrukällan, La Dolce Vita, Jigoku), but it was also the decade when cinema took another course, when surrealism would adopt a new face and when audiences would be invited to appreciate movies differently. As for Bergman, he kept maturing.

100/100

"I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one."

PERSONA (1966)

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Genre: Drama / Mystery
Length: 85 minutes



Being one of my "giants of cinema" and officially one of the best directors in movie history, Ingmar Bergman created in 1966 what ended up being his most deep and complex movie he would ever dare to create. It is not only his most controversial masterpiece, but it is also the most notorious influence within the genre of psychological thrillers (and probably horror as well) for directors such as Takashi Miike, David Cronenberg and David Lynch. Persona is more than just a simple drama; it is one of the most fascinating psychological studies that worldwide classic cinema could ever offer to mankind.

The plot is "simple", or that's what it seems to be when we are given a brief summary of the film at least. A nurse called Alma is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler, an actress that doesn't physically or mentally seem to be sick or have an illness, but completely refuses to speak a single word. Once that Alma begins to talk about herself alongside with some pretty strong confessions to Elisabeth, she begins to find out that her own personality slowly starts to merge itself and combine with the personality of Elisabeth in a gradual sort of way.

From the first moments since the screen brings us its incredible cinematography, variety of images and its unparalleled edition, we enter into a dream; we find ourselves bound to a symbolic and probably incomprehensible nightmare of which we hardly want to wake up in order to find answers as soon as possible. It merely consists in real animal executions, the process of moviemaking seen from the side we usually tend to ignore once we see a movie as a final result brought to the screen, a crucifixion, a tarantula, a forest, silent cartoons and movies, among other stuff. Despite the particular meaning this sequence has or whichever the meaning we want to attribute to it, what really matters is that it prepares us for one of the most intense and brilliant psychological voyages that we could ever travel through while discovering the wonderful and vast world of movies.

This is probably the movie that possesses the most prolonged, mysterious and exasperating silences in comparison to any film that Bergman had ever directed throughout his whole filmic career. The magic of this film emanates from the fact that it can be seen from several points of view, and no matter which is the one we choose to considerate in the end, the movie ends up being utterly spectacular. On one hand we have the dramatic point of view, in which we are witnesses of the merging process through which the leading protagonists slowly go through in an inevitable and supernatural way. The performances from Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman are unforgettable and I dare to say those are two of the beat female leading performances I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. Whether it was because of their beauty or their acting talent, it is not so surprising that the director Ingmar Bergman had fallen in love with Liv Ullman when he made Persona.

On the other hand we have the surrealist point of view, like if it had been directly born from the work of Buñuel. You could just turn off the volume of the film and let the imagery and unforgettable sequences talk by themselves. Probably no other director from those times could have created such a beautiful and unique story in the chilling, surrealist and horrifying way it was treated. The cinematography is extraordinary and Persona has the best taken-care-of shots of his whole filmography, capturing the atmosphere and the physical world found in the surrounding of the characters just as well as the one found inside the head(s) of the protagonist(s). The editing is outstanding and transports us to both worlds in an attractive and hypnotizing way, again and again.

Specifically talking about Persona, it gives a particularly existentialist approach. The name of Alma, from my own point of view, is not there by chance. In fact, the name "Alma" is the Spanish word for "soul". It can be a symbolism representing the fact that several times throughout our lives we are so focused in the simple act of living without any responsibility established as a priority that evil, whether it is a harmful vice, violence or the lack of love or respect towards society, takes control of our lives and we can't tell the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. No matter how many times our conscience tries to warn us about our actions, we keep corrupting our soul and continue ignoring the damage we cause to it, when it actually forms part of our own existence.

However, it is our own conscience, faithfully represented by Alma, the one that is constantly seeking answers to its being for our own sake. It is a part of ourselves that we will never be able to reject, and neither the eternal search for answers about everything that is around us. The more evident scenes depicting the ideas that Bergman wanted to transmit through the performances of Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman are magisterially shown when Elisabeth's husband appears for the first time, and while he is speaking, the situation makes you wonder whom he is really talking to. The shots were so impressively achieved that, thanks to them, a new question is arisen, which is referent to who really are the protagonists and what is it that they really represent.

Persona has also a highly sexual connotation, noticeable from the first 15 minutes of the film. Sexuality isn't portrayed from a perverted perspective, but from a dramatic and symbolic one. From the infamous superimposed penis during the first scene of the film being shown in an almost subliminal way for the viewer to the locked up girl trying to reach the face of a woman which eventually disappears, all of the content put in the film represents, somehow, the controversy and the beauty that maternity can have for a woman. The desire of having a baby which was later rejected could have been represented by the girl locked up in the mind, since the only thing that she wanted was to meet her possible future mother. However, since her existence didn't mean more than just a plain idea, the image of her mother disappears, and the protagonist's problem is finally concreted.

Although the film received constant comparisons with modern directors such as David Lynch and his masterpiece Mulholland Dr. (2001), Persona is a work of art, analyzable from both the cinematographic and artistic points of view, and it is obviously superior to any other possible comparison. I have never seen a film that could be such a personal experience for any individual like Persona was; neither have I seen a more revealing film for an audience. Persona is officially considered as one of the best movies ever made, and although it is not the most appropriate and adequate film to start with Ingmar Bergman's filmography and certainly is the most complex film by his, it is an obvious successful achievement in cinema history that will never be forgotten, no matter the numerous different interpretations it receives when a person finishes watching it.

100/100

It's true. I think... about suicide. I've often thought about it. It's... it's disgusting. It's very degrading and everlastingly the same.

VISKNINGAR OCH ROP (1972)

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Genre: Drama / Romance
Length: 91 minutes



Literary sentimentalism and soap-opera drama has finally reached the formula that, for decades, stood for Bergman's perception of the world. Despite that drama was the key genre for his entire filmography, the 70s was the decade where he made testaments about human redemption and spiritual oblivion through exaggerated drama. Does this mean the usage of stereotypes, clichés and pretentious, tear-inducing stories? Not exactly. Ingmar Bergman conglomerates an extraordinary cast of brilliantly talented women and constructs yet another testament of hidden words, incapacity for empathy and extreme situations that trigger underlying sentiments. One thing is to build a predictable melodrama, and another thing is to orchestrate a masterpiece with the noticeable help of a brilliant writing, adding unprecedented moments of emotional shock value and uncomfortable awkwardness, addressing this hard-to-eat cake with unpredictable adventures, flashbacks and confessions. With an impeccable musical score and the meaningful use of a reddish art direction, Viskningar och Rop is one of the 5 giant films released in 1972, and one of the best modern dramas released in European cinema.

Set in the late 1800's of Sweden, approximating the turn of the century, the film displays an intense family drama when Agnes is visited by her sisters Karin and Maria in her rurally isolated mansion since she is dying of cancer. Her strongest comfort during her sickness has been her dedicated servant named Anna. The lives of the sisters are described through flashbacks throughout, revealing their respective pasts and their emotional difficulties that were derived from lies, deceit, insensibility, forbidden affairs and indifference. Meanwhile, the health condition of Agnes starts to drastically deteriorate, increasing her pain and suffering in the process. Thanks to this, the desperation among the sisters begins to be maximized and, finally, long repressed feelings and brutal confessions rise to the surface. The film received 5 Academy Award nominations in 1974 for Best Cinematography, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material Not Previously Published or Produced, Best Costume Design, Best Director and Pest Picture, winning only the first Oscar and unfairly losing the rest against The Sting (1973). Director Ingmar Bergman won the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival of 1973 and a Silver Ribbon for Best Director - Foreign Film at the Italian national Syndicate of Film Journalists of 1974, among several other international awards.

The international attention that the grandiose auteur Ingmar Bergman received during three decades is a remarkable achievement. Perhaps it was the empathetic psychological features he shared with universally accepted values and benign habits through his films. Perhaps it was his unusual way to heal injuries after periods of oppositions and world wars. Viskningar och Rop is no exception. Bergman is representing a time when an industrialized and progressive society was anticipating a new century of peace and productive evolution. Perhaps it was his intention to mirror, through the female characters, our constant desire of psychological improvement, hence the decision of the sisters to literally confess their guts out after the devastating outcome of an extreme event: a cancer-stricken protagonist with an imminent death. Its cathartic power relies on its self-reflexive nature. What event do we need to wake up and start mending past deceits, incorrect unfaithfulness and heart cracks? Therefore, Anna represents the woman that each of the sisters should have been: a comprehensive, supportive character of admirable strength and disinterested dedication and motherly caring.

With a breathtaking camera work and a feast for the eyes derived from a beautiful art direction, the visuals are contrasted with the heartbreaking atmosphere. Words, shouts, cries and whispers are the unfortunate trophies of the day. The performances are simply extraordinary, from a 34-year-old Liv Ullmann as the passionate Maria (and her nostalgic mother) to a pain-striking, realistic Harriet Andersson as Agnes, a flawed and maternal Kari Sylwan as Anna, and a proudly snobbish Ingrid Thulin as Karin. In the end, the film does not end in the diminishing and criticism of the female genre. It shows the inescapability of human imperfection and the irrevocable feelings that characterizes the human race. Just as a good work of art that shows both sides of the coin, the characters are also plagued with egocentrism, despotism, opportunism, hatred and negative, non-productive resentments. The element that adds the cherry on the top is powerlessness and the ignorance regarding how to develop a scheme of redemption and effective mending.

Due to the aforementioned aspects, the atmosphere of the film grows each time denser as the film progresses and we are invited into the minds of the characters, assuming their roles while we face death from a third-person perspective. Priorities radically start to be modified and pride is immediately challenged, leaving room for the analysis of the psychological and physical background. As we should know, Bergman is always identified because of his metaphorical ambitions which he captures through the direction of magnum opuses heavy in artistry. The following text fragment can be found in the book Images, written by Bergman: "All my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except for Cries and Whispers. In the screenplay, it says that red represents for me the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadow floating in the air like blue smoke - a huge winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red." Through different and varied shades of red, the nucleus of the power of the film is the soul, represented by almost every single physical object and costume seen in Viskningar och Rop. Not only we are transported to the interior of the dragon, but we also see each of the organs working together with the purpose of keeping a huge organism alive. Agnes is the heart, and without the heart, everything is meant to die. Organ donation equals rebirth, allegorically speaking, which could explain the nature of the film's anticlimactic and depressing conclusion.

In the end, Viskningar och Rop is one of the strongest humanism testaments to the strength of the human spirit and the implications of helplessness. The grace and tranquility irradiated by Agnes when she is suddenly restored to a more comfortable health state in a drastic way represents the ability that God, in his almighty wisdom, gave humans to always surpass the difficulties of life. Death is portrayed as an unfathomable stage of the cycle of life, while the atmospheric horror and tension between the siblings is shown in a context of futile crassness. Despite its short running time, the film flows like a river. It is a reddish spectacle to watch and reflect on, and could be accurately referred to as the last perfect film by such a legendary filmmaker. More than a film, it is a shattering and compelling experience, and an honor to modern celluloid.

100/100