Schreie und Flüstern (Cries and Whispers)

This existential wail of a drama concerns two sisters, Karin and Maria, keeping vigil for a third, Agnes, who is dying of cancer and can find solace only in the arms of a beatific servant. An intensely felt film that is one of Bergman’s most striking formal experiments, Cries and Whispers (which won an Oscar for the extraordinary color photography by Sven Nykvist) is a powerful depiction of human behavior in the face of death, positioned on the borders between reality and nightmare, tranquility and terror.