"It was shot during the autumn. He [Bergman] made it for his own company. He said, '[If] I am not happy with it. I won't release it, but it is an experience for me. It is my own workship. I am working with my own group. If we are happy with it, then we will release it'....[The actors were listed as producers] so he didn't have to pay us. We thought we were being producers and we would have things to say. But what it all amounted to was that he didn't pay us."


"Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers was a worldwide success though it had all the elements of failure, including the sight of the slow torture of a woman dying of cancer—everything the public refuses to look at. But the film's formal perfection, especially the use of red in the decor of the house, constituted the element of exaltation—I would even say the element of pleasure—so that the public immediately sensed that it was watching a masterpiece. And it made up its mind to look at it with an artistic complicity and admiration that balanced and compensated for the trauma of Harriet Andersson's cries and her groans of agony."


"Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances, when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover."


"When four extraordinary actresses are brought together, fatal emotional collisions can easily result. But the women were good, loyal, and helpful. Besides, most important, they were all incredibly talented. I have absolutely no reason to complain. And I'm happy to report that I did not."



"In the rare company of such films as Marnie and Il deserto rosso, Cries and Whispers fuses its meaning to its controlled use of colour. Brilliantly simple, it is a film of reds, even punctuated with red-outs rather than darkening fades. Opening with crepuscular light in the sculpture garden of a 19th-century mansion, the film moves quickly indoors where it settles, with a single exterior flashback, until its epilogue. The house is remarkable for its red upholstery: richly saturated red walls and furnishings set off the white gowns in which three sisters, Agnes, Karin, and Maria, and their servant Anna, dress themselves following the model of their dead mother who appears in a flashback. Agnes lies dying, apparently of a cancer of the womb or stomach. After her death the white motif shifts to black. Perhaps the most brilliant and simple act of colour organization comes from the dramatic placement of a final flashback motivated by Anna's reading in Agnes's diary (after her death) of an ecstatic afternoon of lush autumnal colours. The natural effulgence is all the more striking for being reserved and isolated at the end of the film."


"I found that Ingmar Bergman, who proved that a great director can also do very well commercially too, had had an argument with Svensk Film, the company for whom he had worked. When he decided to make another film, this time on his own, he told me, 'I made this film a little bit like you make your films: I put up my own money and I just made the film.' And then, and this was very smart of him, he said, 'I was aware that in international distribution, different countries are considered to be a certain percentage of the world market.' The biggest is the United States—the United States might be 30 or 40 percent of the world market, Argentina might be five percent and so forth. He said, 'I simply took how much money I spent on my film, [and] divided that into the world market. I went and said to distributors in each country, Give me that percentage of my negative costs in advance so I'll get my costs, and then I'll split the profits with you 50-50.' I said, 'That's one of the fairest offers I've ever seen. I'll take the picture sight unseen.' And then he said, 'No, you must see the film.' I said, 'But I'll take it anyway.' And the film was Cries And Whispers....The film was brilliant."


"I had had an image...for more than a year, I think. I had this image that kept coming back to me time and again. A strange image, and they're often forebodings of a film. One particular image. This image depicted a room that was completely red. The wallpaper was red, the carpet was red, and the furniture was in various shades of red. And in the back of the room there were four women. They wore dresses from the turn of the century, from before World War I. They were all dressed in white nightgowns. They spoke with each other, facing each other as they did. I stood far away from them. I saw them from far off in the room in this image. Far off in the room. This image persistently returned to me. One good way is to try to write about these women. It's always been the case whenever there's been an image. The best way is always to start writing. Because if it vanishes, then there's nothing more to it. One can abandon the project. But if these women persist, or the image persists, then one should continue writing. And so I did....Once I had realized who these women were...and had identified them and given them a background and ages and life circumstances, it all went very quickly...which was fun. Although the story is a very sad one....For me, Cries and Whispers is so much about music. 'Cries and whispers' is not my own phrase but comes from a review of a piano sonata by Mozart. I can't remember which one. It said that the slow movements were like cries and whispers, and I thought that fit very well. Because it is, in fact, a piece of music translated into images."