This was Bergman’s first film in color, and he prepared for the transition with fastidious care. Set in the music world, the film is a satire about pompous males and the women who stroke their vanity while getting just what they want from them. A pretentious music critic visits the summer home of a renowned cellist who has just died. Intending to write the cellist’s biography, the critic (as much a despised figure in Bergman as he is in Beckett) encounters a glittering phalanx of women who were the musician’s “harem.” Having put up with the virtuoso’s infantilism, they now set about toying with the critic who seems to want to become the man he is writing about. The film is most notable for bringing together a sparkling ensemble of Bergman’s favorite actresses who have a great time as “all these women.”