Costume & Set Design / Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers

Often referred to as the reddest movie in the history of cinema, Cries and Whispers (1972) by Ingmar Bergman is a visceral exploration of death, pain, loneliness, and fleeting compassion, told almost entirely through color, silence, and the subtle language of gesture. Dominated by a striking palette of red, black, and white, the film creates a world where visuals do not just support the narrative, they are the narrative. The title itself was borrowed from music critic Yngve Flücht’s description of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14, which he characterized as music composed of “screams and whispers,” a duality that perfectly mirrors the emotional tension of Bergman’s chamber drama. So powerful is the imagery of the film that in 1981, Sweden issued a postage stamp featuring one of its most iconic scenes: the maid Anna cradling the dying Agnes in a modern day Pietà.

In his book “Images”, Ingmar Bergman recalled that the same scene kept popping up in front of him for a year: “A red room and women in white clothes. They were moving, whispering, behaving in an extreme degree of mystery. Time after time I discarded this vision, refusing to base it on the movie (or anything else). But the vision persisted, and I grudgingly explained it: three women are waiting for the fourth to die. They take turns on duty.”

“All my movies,” the director continues, ”could have been black and white, except for Whispers and Screams. The script says that I conceived of the color red as an expression of the essence of the soul. As a child, I envisioned the soul as a smoky-blue, shadow-like dragon, some huge soaring winged creature – half bird, half fish. But inside, the dragon was solid red.”

Red is the dominant color throughout the film. It is perhaps the reddest movie in cinematic history. The overwhelming scarlet hues of the film, somewhat softened by the black and white colors of the dresses and sheets, refer not only to the “soul” but literally to the human gut. “Cries and Whispers” is about the physical body, the process of dying and, more importantly, coming to terms with death. Everything we see on the screen is subordinated to the idea of inner suffering, death, alienation and the impossibility of true intimacy. Colors play a key role in the film, enhancing the psychological and emotional depth of the story.

The movie is set at the turn of the century in a secluded family estate. The main character Agnes (Harriet Andersson) suffers from a fatal illness. At her bedside are her sisters Maria (Liv Ullmann), Karin (Ingrid Thulin), and the family maid Anna (Kari Sylvan). The movie focuses on the final stages of her agony and the days after her death.

Marik Vos-Lundh, one of the most prominent figures in the history of Swedish costume design and set design, was responsible for the costumes and sets in the movie. Vos and Bergman have worked together on numerous films and theatrical productions and share a viewpoint on scenography where a dominant and constant color is welcomed to create a mood.

Color is very important, as it is the many shades of red that give the film a sense of tension. As we can all assume, red can stand for love, hate, blood, fever, passion or anger. The red walls serve almost as a womb for these women and is certainly a place where the idea of blood kinship is questioned. And it seems that the red living room in their childhood home is the only place where an attempt at dialogue is still possible. But does anyone need it?

Although the action takes place at the turn of the century, Vos didn’t design the dresses to look historically accurate. They have the shape of that era (late 19th century), but without the elaborate details. The costumes were not meant to distract the viewer from the narrative, but instead just support it.

The blood-red rooms in Cries and Whispers, where the women in the movie are in stark contrast to their turn-of-the-century white and black dresses, have made visual movie history. The rooms of the three sisters are decorated almost identically – suggesting an outward equality, but internally each is completely different and this can be seen through their clothing as well. Agnes is dressed in white throughout the movie. White is a symbol of purity and spirituality, but at the same time this color is associated with illness and death, including the shroud.

Maria – the younger sister – is charming and flirtatious, outwardly warm, openly affectionate. But it’s a surface act. Beneath the softness and seduction, she is hollow—superficial, manipulative. Her body is a tool, and she knows how to use it. She favors revealing dresses, sheer lace, plunging necklines—her sexuality is not hinted at, but announced. Her clothes seduce for her. They are her performance, her distraction.

Karin, the eldest, is the exact opposite. Cold, detached, numb—not only to others, but to herself. She’s always cloaked in darkness, draped in black. Her body is hidden away, erased under long sleeves, high collars, heavy fabrics. Clothing for Karin isn’t just modesty—it’s armor. The outside world is unbearable, and her only defense is distance. We see the full weight of this in the scene where the maid, Anna, helps undress her before bed. It’s slow, deliberate—layer after layer stripped away: jewelry, outer dress, petticoats, corset, robe, stockings. What remains is fragility, buried under layers of control. And even then, she armors back up in a nightgown and robe. If Maria exposes herself to manipulate, Karin conceals herself to survive.

The color palette in Cries and Whispers is its own kind of scream. In the second half, white is swallowed by black. It starts subtly—flecks of shadow, foreshadowing loss—and then consumes everything. One of the most devastating images comes when Anna cradles the dead Agnes, a direct nod to the Pietà. But this isn’t the Virgin and Christ. It’s not sacred—it’s human. The gesture isn’t salvation, it’s mercy. Not a holy offering, but a raw, intimate attempt to hold someone else’s pain. And it doesn’t come from the sisters—it comes from the maid. That moment says everything: the most profound tenderness doesn’t exist within the family, but outside of it. The blood ties are dry. The love, absent.

Bergman doesn’t decorate—he dissects. The costumes, the set, the color—they don’t support the narrative, they are the narrative. Cries and Whispers is a film about the body in crisis: the pain of dying, the inability to connect, the terror of being unloved. It doesn’t soften anything. It shows what happens when intimacy is impossible and death comes too close. The film doesn’t whisper—it bleeds. Bleeds with meaning, turning the stillness of a room, the rustle of fabric, and the absence of touch into a profound meditation on the fragility of the human soul.