'Whispers and Cries') is a 1972 Swedish period drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann.

Inspired by Bergman's mother, Karin Åkerblom, and his vision of four women in a red room, Cries and Whispers was filmed at Taxinge-Näsby Castle in 1971.

Karin recalls an earlier occasion at the mansion, where, struggling with self-harm, she mutilated her genitals with a piece of broken glass to repel her husband Fredrik.

The family decides to send Anna away at the end of the month, with Fredrik refusing to award her with any additional severance pay, and the maid rejects her promised memento.

[17] In an essay included with the DVD, critic Peter Cowie quoted the director: "All of my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except Cries and Whispers".

[33] The scene where Anna cradles Agnes suggests that touch and sensation are soothing, despite the "opaque" question of their relationship, which may be comparable to sisterhood.

[34][d] Cinema historian P. Adams Sitney wrote that Hansel and Gretel's parents abandoned them in the forest (symbolism), and Agnes' cancer is the equivalent of the witch in the Brothers Grimm tale.

Törnqvist wrote that Karin's transfer of blood from her vulva to her mouth means that she will neither have sex nor speak, and preventing communication reinforces loneliness.

[38] Sitney wrote that the family is most united when reading Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, which describes "male solidarity and chicanery, threatened by female plots for marriage".

[40] Film scholar Marc Gervais wrote that Cries and Whispers has no definitive solution of whether suffering and death have any meaning, citing the pastor who expresses his own doubts and fears when he eulogises Agnes.

[43] Törnqvist compared the ending to that of Bergman's 1957 Wild Strawberries; it "points to the past, to a paradisaic existence in this life, to the communion inherent in childhood that has later been lost".

[30] Critic Marco Lanzagorta wrote, "Undeniably, Cries and Whispers is a film about the world of women, and is very open in terms of the gender and sexual politics that it portrays".

[46] In Film Quarterly, Joan Mellen acknowledged that Bergman used his female characters as mouthpieces and his women signify "the dilemma of alienated, suffering human beings".

[53] Author Birgitta Steene disputed what she called Mellen's Marxist feminist analysis, cross-referencing Bergman's realistic and metaphorical films to say that they are not the product of a sexist outlook.

[54] Although Agnes' apparent resurrection may reflect Anna's fear (or desire), Emma Wilson wrote that it blurred the line between life and dream and might involve supernatural activity.

[57] P. Adams Sitney concluded that Cries and Whispers tells of an "Orphic transformation of terror into art, of the loss of the mother into the musical richness of autumnal color".

[58] The sisters' Aunt Olga uses the magic lantern to narrate "Hansel and Gretel", and Sitney connected this with "the gift of fairy tales—and thereby the psychic-defense machinery for exteriorising infantile and Oedipal terrors".

[44] According to academic Arthur Gibson, the Pietà rite becomes redemption: "Anna is holding in her arms the pain and loneliness and sin of the world caught up in the innocent Divine Sufferer".

[64] In 1972, Variety's staff defined "Bergman's lean style" as including a "use of lingering close-ups, fades to red and a soundtrack echoing with the ticking of clocks, the rustle of dresses and the hushed cries of the lost".

[12] Wilson noted the film's red rooms occupied by women in white, and the "azure, Edenic images of the start are gradually engulfed in crimson".

[69] Blood, seen when Maria's husband injures himself and Karin cuts her vulva, echoes an earlier view of the mother character holding a red book against her dress.

[70] Wilson described other uses of imagery: statues filling a garden, decorations, sunlight on a clock and a view of Maria revealing the "texture" of her hair.

[53] Surveying the visuals and Bergman's depiction of social isolation and mourning, critics Christopher Heathcote and Jai Marshall found parallels in the paintings of Edvard Munch.

[19] Noting its use when the two sisters touch affectionately, critic Robin Wood wrote that it fit Bergman's use of Bach to signify "a possible transcendent wholeness".

[75] To qualify for the 46th Academy Awards, distributors hurried to premiere Cries and Whispers in Los Angeles County (several months before its Swedish release).

[85] Roger Ebert gave Cries and Whispers four stars (out of four) in his initial review: "We slip lower in our seats, feeling claustrophobia and sexual disquiet, realizing that we have been surrounded by the vision of a film maker who has absolute mastery of his art".

[89] Empire critic David Parkinson gave Cries and Whispers five stars in 2000, writing that the film fit a subset of "character study" at which Bergman was adept.

[94] Reviewing the Blu-ray in 2015, SF Gate critic Mick LaSalle called Cries and Whispers a "masterpiece" in which the colour red had an important effect.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Visually stunning and achingly performed, Ingmar Bergman's chamber piece is a visceral rumination on death and sisterhood.

[106] In 1981, PostNord Sverige issued a postage stamp of the scene where Anna holds Agnes as part of a series commemorating the history of Swedish cinema.