Cries & Whispers
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Synopsis
Legendary director Ingmar Bergman creates a testament to the strength of the soul-and a film of absolute power. Karin and Maria come to the aid of their dying sister, Agnes, but jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness come before empathy. Agnes, tortured by cancer, transcends the pettiness of her sisters' concerns to remember moments of being-moments that Bergman, with the help of Academy Award&tm;-winning cinematographer Sven Nykvist, translates into pictures of staggering beauty and unfathomable horror.
Picture 7/10
Criterion’s original DVD edition for Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers presents the film in its original aspect ratio of about 1.66:1 on a dual-layer disc. The standard-definition presentation has been enhanced for widescreen televisions.
For an older DVD transfer it doesn’t look altogether bad. The restoration work has been rather thorough, with only a few marks remaining, limited mostly to just specs of dirt that pop up here and there. Film grain has actually been left intact and it’s handled rather well for a standard-definition encode, but upscaled to a high-def television it looks a bit noisy and splotchy.
Detail is quite good for the most part, particularly on close-ups. A few longer shots lack definition, though, and come off a bit fuzzy. The film looks a bit dark, and blacks can crush out some details in the shadows, but colours otherwise look fine. Red plays a very prominent part in the look of the film and they mostly look good here. Unfortunately DVD never handled reds altogether that well and there are moments where they look more orange rather than red.
It is open to a lot of improvement, and the new Blu-ray clearly outdoes this edition, but for the period it was released it wasn’t a bad looking presentation.
Audio 6/10
The film comes with both the original Swedish audio and then an English dub. Both are presented in Dolby Digital 1.0 mono. Of the two the Swedish is the better sounding track, though still a product of its age. Though fairly clean it still has a real hollow, flat sound to it. Fidelity is lacking and volume levels are pretty one note. The English track sounds a bit edgier and unnatural on the other hand, so most will probably want to stick with that.
Extras 3/10
The original DVD only included one feature of a note, but it was a solid one: Ingmar Bergman: Reflections on Life, Death, and Love with Erland Josephson, a 52-minute interview featuring Bergman and Josephson talking with interviewer Malou von Sivers. The two talk extensively about themselves and do cover their work together, though talk more about their personal lives (which they are surprisingly open about, admitting to their mistakes) and touch on the subjects in the title, particularly love and death. Not specific to Cries and Whispers and admittedly it’s not very focused on their work, but it’s an enjoyable and worthwhile addition.
The only other item of note is a very short 2-page essay by scholar Peter Cowie, which can be found in the included insert. He offers a nice scholarly examination of the film but it’s too brief.
Though the interview is a good inclusion and well worth viewing, it was always disappointing this didn’t receive a more analytical set of features.
Closing
It disappoints in the way of supplements, but the transfer is still decent for an older DVD, but it has been boosted by Criterion’s recent Blu-ray edition.
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