LDV118

28 AU CINÉMA CE SOIR Also unfathomably cruel is Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers . . . One of the greatest films of all time, in my view, even if I have a slight preference for movies shot in black and white. In any case, Cries and Whispers isn’t really filmed in colour, but in red and white! The only colour scene is the one in the park, where the whole space is saturated with autumnal hues. The pianist Käbi Laretei, Bergman’s ex-wife, plays Chopin’s Mazurka op.17 no.4 in the film. Paul Badura-Skoda, who was a pupil of Edwin Fischer, told me that they used to attend his classes together along with Alfred Brendel. Quite apart from her great beauty, he said, she played remarkably well. Both the Chopin piece and the Bach Sarabande for cello performed by Pierre Fournier represent the obsession with time symbolised by the multitude of chiming and ticking clocks. The opening of the mazurka seems to emerge from nowhere. It expresses the repressed feelings – the central subject of the film – and the mutual hatred of the sisters, not forgetting the secret love of the maidservant who witnesses the drama. This film horrifies and overwhelms me.