Trivia / Cries and Whispers

• Acting for Two: Liv Ullmann plays Maria and all three sisters' deceased mother. It's not coincidental as a jealous Agnes remarks to herself that Maria was closest to their mother and came out looking like her the most. Although Maria has red hair and the mother was a brunette.
• Award Category Fraud: Dear folks at BAFTA, there is no way Ingrid Thulin (Karin) is just a supporting actress. Her character is just as important as the other two sisters and her development is put at the forefront more often than Maria's.
• Based on a Dream: Bergman kept dreaming of women dressed in white walking through a red house. He thought that if one dreams of the same thing often, it's better to commit it to film.
• Career Resurrection: Bergman had fallen from grace after the underwhelming The Rite and The Touch (1971). Cries and Whispers came right after those two and is widely considered a return to form.
• Completely Different Title:
  • The European Portuguese title is Lágrimas e Suspiros (Tears and Sighs).
  • The Dutch one is Schreeuw zonder antwoord (A Cry With No Answer).
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Bergman considered this and Persona (1966) to be his best work.
• Creator's Oddball: Its first American distributor was New World Pictures, a company founded by B-Movie king Roger Corman which up until that point had dealt only in exploitation movies. Bergman was reportedly very amused by this.
• Doing It for the Art: The budget was so low (although you wouldn't guess it, given the film came out beautifully) that Bergman had to ask the cast to forfeit their paychecks, which they agreed to.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Not as extreme as other examples, but Harriet Andersson was kept up late at night to enhance the sickly appearance that the part called for.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: The voices in the English dub are all provided by the live-action cast, and it was Bergman who directed the dub too.
• Real-Life Relative: Maria's daughter is played by Liv Ullmann's (and Ingmar Bergman's) actual daughter, Linn Ullmann.
• Referenced by...: The New Order B-Side "Cries and Whispers" is titled after the movie.
• Short Run in Peru: Premiered in the USA in December 1972 so it would be eligible for the Oscars. It premiered in Sweden months later.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Bergman had designs of casting Mia Farrow as Anna.
  • In the script, Karin's flashback is shown first, and Maria's second; they're swapped in the film. There were also different scenes leading to the flashbacks (the flashbacks themselves aren't really different). Karin's scene shows her embroidering and brooding over a portrait of a Saint Therese, while Maria's takes place right after the wake and shows her begging Isak (the priest) to absolve her from her sins, which he reluctantly does.
• Write Who You Know: The four women are supposedly aspects of Bergman's mother (her name was Karin, incidentally).