"Actor: Lena Bergman"

• Cries And Whispers | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers is a brilliant and at times shockingly traumatic piece of chamber cinema. It also represented a renaissance for Bergman, whose previous few films had flopped commercially. Set in a large house with interiors done out entirely in a disquieting red and against a soundtrack of ticking and barely audible chatter, the film features three of Bergman’s female stalwarts. Harriet Andersson plays Agnes--a thirtysomething woman dying of cancer--Ingrid Thulin plays her sister Karin--non-tactile and caught in a marriage with a man she finds physically repulsive--and Liv Ulmann is the almost childishly sensual second sister Maria. Kari Sylwan, meanwhile, stars as the earth-motherly maid Anna, whose cradling of the dying Agnes against her naked bosom is one of the centrepieces of the movie. Much of what transpires here can be construed as fantasy sequence, including one extraordinary incident in which Thulin cuts her vagina with broken glass and smears the blood over herself, in order to avoid sex with her husband. Agnes’ unbearable cries of anguish in her death throes, however, are all too real. Many familiar Bergman themes are explored in Cries And Whispers--mortality, the existence of God (here doubted by a Pastor) and the space between people. However, they are set against a singular, blood-red, dreamlike ambience that is irresistible. This is Bergman at his finest. On the DVD: the dominant red backdrops of the movie are richly enhanced in this edition. Text-only extras include notes from Bergman’s own memoirs. In a lengthy extract here, he reveals that he had considered Mix Farrow for the part of one of the sisters. Philip Strick’s additional notes add further context and background--it seems that the film’s success in America was due to its distribution by, of all people, Roger Corman. --David Stubbs

• Scenes From A Marriage | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage opens with a couple--Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johann (Erland Josephson)--being interviewed for a magazine. Every moment seems to teeter on the brink of some rupture; just as they start to get comfortable, the interviewer has them freeze for a photograph. After making some bland, general statements, they both start admitting intimate details, confessing that they were brought together by mutual misery, then cheerfully claiming that theirs is a model marriage. The entirety of Scenes from a Marriage--which chronicles their emotional relationship even after a divorce and marriages to other people--continues to have these contradictions, moments of honesty and self-deception, of cruelty and kindness, concern and self-obsession, all laid bare by the skilful actors and the subtle, constantly shifting screenplay. Every scene is a small movie unto itself; in fact, Scenes from a Marriage was originally a six-episode TV show, carefully edited down into a unified film. This is one of Bergman's most immediate and accessible works, concerned more with the facts of human behaviour than symbolism or abstract themes. Bergman understands how to balance what could be horrible pain and despair with the characters' earnest efforts to improve their lives. His imitators reduce everything to sheer suffering and alienation; Bergman sees the best in his characters, even when their actions are terrible. This 1973 film won numerous awards, including several acting honours for Ullmann. --Bret Fetzer