Date of Award

Spring 5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Film Studies

First Advisor

Nam Lee

Second Advisor

Kelli Fuery

Third Advisor

Brian Glaser

Abstract

It is no surprise that the chronically ill Ingmar Bergman featured recurrent motifs of illness throughout his oeuvre. What is more surprising is that this consequential component of these works remain largely unexplored. Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop, 1971), Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte,1976), and Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978), are pivotal examples of this shift, where illness is not merely an individual experience for these women but a complex, embodied phenomenon that profoundly shapes interpersonal relationships, particularly within family structures. This thesis conceives phenomenologies of illness in three 1970s films by Ingmar Bergman – Cries and Whispers, Face to Face, and Autumn Sonata – that reveal the assaultive effect of illness on the body from both the disease-state itself and the anxious societal perceptions of disability. A phenomenological framework, as outlined by Havi Carel, will reveal the qualitative experience of illness, not only in how it affects the ill subject but how it becomes a disability, a landfill for anxiety and vulnerability from others. Maria, Jenny, and Eva serve as focal points through which illness becomes an intense, embodied experience that can be perceived in relation to herself and her surroundings, producing a broader reflection of ill women’s affinities left unresolved in cinema, society, and medical institutions. In Rosemarie Garland Thompson's observations, there is a "discursive equation of femaleness to disability" (Extraordinary Bodies, 19) that punctuates the social restriction embedded into both positions of being in the world that this paper seeks to interrogate. Central to understanding the illness experience are themes pain and loss of function, which will be scrutinized through Agnes, who is terminally ill with uterine cancer in Cries and Whispers; Jenny in Face to Face, who endures deep-seated trauma; Helena's degenerative disease and Charlotte's chronic back pain in Autumn Sonata. As all three films suggest, a polysemy of how it feels and what it means to endure illness prevails, highlighting the need for continued integration of critical illness phenomenologies beyond Bergman’s work and across film and media studies.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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