[What] Bergman does in this very special and provoking film [Cries and Whispers] is to subject to ruthless scrutiny his own extravagant identification with various feminine characters. By coldly exposing them, by forcing them to have at one another and to acquiesce in the process of their own relentless humiliation, Bergman calls into question his own boundless attraction to them. (p. 136)

It is obvious to most of us that a film is more than a series of verbal structures or pictorial images, that it is as well a relation it establishes with viewers; similarly, a body of work, a whole collection of films by a single artist, is more than specific attitudes or ideas taken up in one or more of them. When we think of Bergman we must think necessarily of intonation, the timbre and range of the voice which persists through the changing focus and altogether...