Bergman 28: Cries and Whispers (1972)

I've seen this once before, and found it very impressive but also a little irritating. This seems to me now rather unfair, a result of confusing some of the things the film explores (a certain histrionic quality, a desire to shock) with the film itself - which is not entirely inappropriate, but seems so less now than it did then. The sense of various kinds of hauntings came across to me very strongly this time. I think I responded most to some beautifully delicate but very effective details, like the way that when Harriet Andersson first gets out of bed she's perfectly upright, while none of the other horizonal or vertical lines in the shot are true; or the way Erland Josephson gives a cruel little lesson in facial interpretation which Liv Ulmann doesn't deny so much as suggest that he can only find in her face what is true about him - which is perhaps a little allegory of film viewing.