"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."
РIngmar Bergman, interview with Marie Nyrer̦d (2003)
"All my films can be thought in black and white, except for Cries and Whispers. In the screenplay, I say that I have thought of the colour red as the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I saw the soul as a shadowy dragon, blue as smoke, hovering like an enormous winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon everything was red."
"I believe that the film–or whatever it is–consists of this poem: a human being dies but, as in a nightmare, gets stuck halfway through and pleads for tenderness, mercy, deliverance, something. Two other human beings are there, and their actions, their thoughts are in relation to the dead, not-dead, dead. The third person saves her by gently rocking, so she can find peace, by going with her part of the way."
– Ingmar Bergman, from his workbook for
Cries and Whispers (22 April 1971)
– Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Film
"I believe that the film–or whatever it is–consists of this poem: a human being dies but, as in a nightmare, gets stuck halfway through and pleads for tenderness, mercy, deliverance, something. Two other human beings are there, and their actions, their thoughts are in relation to the dead, not-dead, dead. The third person saves her by gently rocking, so she can find peace, by going with her part of the way."
– Ingmar Bergman, from his workbook for
Cries and Whispers (22 April 1971)
