THE SEMINAR
Ingmar Bergman held a seminar with the Fellows of the Center for Advanced Film Studies on October 31, 1975.

Please tell us how you work with actors.

BERGMAN: It can be a very complicated question, and it can be a very simple question. If you want to know exactly how I work together with my actors I can tell you in one minute: I just use my intuition. My only instrument in my profession is my intuition. When I work at the theatre or in the studio with my actors I just feel; I don't know how to handle the situation, how to collaborate with the artists, with the actors. One thing is very important to me: that an actor is always a creative human being, and what your intuition has to find out is how to make free–do you understand what I mean?–to make free the power, the creative power in the actor or the actress.

I can't explain how it works. It has nothing to do with magic; it has a lot to do with experience. But I think when I work together with the actors I try to be like a radar–I try to be wide open–because we have to create something together. I give them some stimulations and suggestions and they give me a lot of stimulations and suggestions, and if this fantastic wave of giving and taking is cut off for any reason I have to feel it and I have to look for the reason–good heavens, what has happened?–and I know if we try to work with those waves cut off it is terrifying; it is the hardest, toughest job that exists, both for me and the actors. Some directors work under aggression: the director is aggressive and the actors are aggressive, and they get marvelous results. But to me it is impossible. I have to be in contact, in touch with my actors the whole time. Because what we first of all create when we start a work together is an atmosphere of security around us. And it's not only me who creates that atmosphere; we are together to create it.

But you know, all those situations, all those decisions, all those very difficult decisions, you have to make hundreds of them every day–I never think. It's never an intellectual process, it's just intuition. Afterward you can think it over–What was this? What was that? You can think over every step you have made.

Do you write in the same way?

BERGMAN: Yes, yes, yes. The best time in the writing, I think, is the time when I have no ideas about how to do it. I can lie down on the sofa and I can look into the fire and I can go to the seaside and I can just sit down and do nothing. I just play the game, you know, and it's wonderful and I make some notes and I can go on for a year. Then, when I have made the plan, the difficult job starts: I have to sit down on my ass every morning at ten o'clock and write the screenplay. And then something very, very strange happens: often the personalities in my scripts don't want the same thing I want. If I try to force them to do what I want them to do, it will always be an artistic catastrophe. But if I let them free to do what they want and what they tell me, it's OK.

So I think that is the only way to handle it, because all intellectual decisions must come afterward. You have seen Cries and Whispers, yes? For half a year, I went around and I just had a picture inside about three women walking around in a red room in white clothes and I didn't know why. I couldn't understand these damned women–I tried to throw it away, I tried to write it down, I tried to find out what they said to each other, because they whispered. And suddenly it came out that they were watching another woman who was dying in the next room, and then it started. But it took about a year. It always starts with a picture with some kind of tension in it, and then slowly it comes up.

In your films you often confuse reality and dreams, and I wonder if you feel that they are of equal importance.

BERGMAN: You know, you can't find in any other art, and you can't create a situation that is so close to dreaming as cinematography when it is at its best. Think only of the time gap: you can make things as long as you want, exactly as in a dream; you can make things as short as you want, exactly as in a dream. As a director, a creator of the picture, you are like a dreamer: you can make what you want, you can construct everything. I think that is one of the most fascinating things that exists.

I think also the reception for the audience of a picture is very, very hypnotic. You sit there in a completely dark room, anonymous, and you look at a lightened spot in front of you and you don't move. You sit and you don't move and your eyes are concentrated on that white spot on the wall. That is some sort of magic. I think it's also magic that two times every frame comes and stands still for twenty-four parts of a second and then it darkens two times; a half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic. It's quite different when you watch the television: you sit at home, you have light around you, you have people you know around you, the telephone is ringing, you can go out and have a cup of coffee, the children are making noise, I don't know what–but it is absolutely another situation.

We are in the position to work with the most fascinating medium that exists in the world because like music we go straight to the feeling–not over the intellect–we go straight to the feeling, as in music. Afterward we can start to work with our intellect. If the picture is good, if the suggestions from the creator of the picture are strong enough, they'll give you thoughts afterward; you'll start to think; they are intellectually stimulating.

After you have written a script, do you continue to develop the characters during the shooting?

BERGMAN: No. You know, I have always worked with trained actors; I have never worked with amateurs. An amateur can be himself always and you can put him in situations that give the situation a third dimension, as Vittorio De Sica did in The Bicycle Thief [a 1947 classic of Italian "neorealism"], but if you work with trained actors you must know exactly what you are going to do with the parts. We make all the discussions before and then we work in the studio, giving each other suggestions. But the whole time we must have in mind what we meant. And it's very dangerous to go away and suddenly start to improvise. You can improvise, of course, in the studio, but if you improvise you have to be very prepared, because to improvise on an improvisation is always shit. If you are very prepared and know how to do it, you can go back if your improvisation suddenly one day fades away, which it does. Of course it does. Inspiration, enthusiasm, everything like that is beautiful, but I don't like it. When we are in the studio we have to be very strict.

How have you found financing for your films?

BERGMAN: You know, it has never been a real problem for me. Compared to the American or international productions, my pictures are always low-budget productions. Cries and Whispers cost about $450,000. Scenes from a Marriage cost us about $200,000. There is always some fool who wants to raise the money. There must be gamblers and optimistic people in the business. Don't you think so?

Could you have made the kinds of films that you make if you were working in America?

BERGMAN: Absolutely not. I think it would have been impossible. I came to the business during the war, in 1942, and Sweden was isolated completely. We could only get German pictures and we didn't want them, so we had to make our pictures ourselves. This was before the TV, so the Swedes were running to the movie theatres very much. This little country with only 7 million people made about forty or fifty pictures a year, so suddenly everybody who knew the front and the back of a camera was a cameraman, and everybody who had ever spoken to an actor was a director.

Of course, it was fantastic, because in three years I had made three pictures, three catastrophes, three flops, and I was still alive. So we could just go on and make films and that was very healthy and unneurotic. It was not a question of making money or making box-office success or something. But when I had made my fifth box-office catastrophe I was kicked out.

I remember the morning when I was kicked out–it was after a catastrophic opening of a picture of mine–I was in bed and I was crying, saying to my girlfriend, "Oh, I think they will never let me make a picture again," and the telephone rang. It was a crazy man who said, "Ingmar, I think you are a little bit more modest now, so perhaps we can work together." And I was. That was the beginning. I am still grateful to that man. He taught me almost everything about filmmaking, because I was a happy amateur, very enthusiastic, and had enormous ideas about making pictures about life and death and everything. Nobody understood my pictures–I don't understand them myself–you know, when I see one of them I get completely red over my whole body. I was a very difficult director. I was very aggressive and I was absolutely terrifying in the studio because I was insecure.

And do you know what the most important thing was that this man taught me? What I still use? You know how it is when we see our dailies; we just say, "God, help me." Isn't it so? Because very often when you see the rushes you have the feeling that you want to go under the bed and never go out again, like a dog. And we all say, "This is not so bad." Somebody else says, "No, it's pretty good." And then a third says, "It's wonderful." We try to pep ourselves up to have the courage to continue the next day. Well, this man said to me, "I hate this pepping up. Sit, be objective, be your own worst critic. Be cold. Don't let yourself fall down into depression or up into euphoria. Just sit and see it all quietly. Don't blame your crew. All of you have done your best. The only thing you have to ask yourself is, 'Is this all right or do I have to retake it?' Just be objective."

It's almost impossible, but I think that is one of the best things I have learned in my life. And best of all, I think, is to be alone with your God and the projectionist when you see the rushes. Because when people sit there, they are an audience–even if it's a cat, you just sit waiting for something for cats. So it is best of all just to be completely alone.

What is your relation to the camera? Do you feel you have to overcome the technical limitations of the camera?

BERGMAN: If intuition is our mental instrument, the camera is our physical instrument. I think the camera is erotic. It is the most exciting little machine that exists. To me, just to work together with my cameraman, Sven Nykvist, to see a human face with the camera and with a zoom to come closer, to see the scene, to see the face changing, it's the most fascinating thing that exists. The choreography of the actors in relation to the camera is very important. If the actor feels that he is in a good position, in a logical position, he can be with his back to the camera; it doesn't matter. The camera has to be the best friend of the actors, and the actors have to be secure with our handling of the camera. They must feel that we are taking care of them.

Are there many young directors here? Very good. We who are directors must never forget that we are behind the camera and the actor is in front of the camera; he is nude, his soul is nude. If he has confidence in us, we have enormous responsibility. We have something fantastic: we have somebody in our hands and we can destroy him or we can help him in his creative job. To be behind the camera is never difficult, but to be in front of the camera is always a challenge, a difficulty, to be there with your face and your body and all the limitations you have in your soul and all the limitations you feel of your face and your movements, I don't know what. What is strange is that we must not lie to the actors; we have to be absolutely true to them. Better actors like the truth more.

When is the moment you stage the movement or position of camera? When I read the screenplays you write, they always say only what the actors are saying, a bit like a play. When is the moment you state, "The camera will be here"?

BERGMAN: The evening before. When I come home in the evening I just sit down with the script and I read the next day's schedule very carefully. Then I make up my mind about it and I just note the choreography of the actors and the camera. And then in the early morning when I meet Sven–you know, we have worked so many years together–we just very shortly, in five minutes, go through the scene, and I tell him about my ideas for different positions of the camera and the different positions of the actors and the atmosphere of the whole scene. Then we can go on the whole day; it is not necessary to have any discussions. He is a marvelous man. He is very silent and very shy. He is nice. And suddenly everything is there–without any complications–and I can look in the camera and everything I wanted is there.

Do you rehearse with the actors on the set before you plan your shots?

BERGMAN: No, never. That is a very good question. Because if you rehearse with trained actors they go from the mood of intuition to what they are trained to, to stage acting every evening. It's very difficult. If you go on rehearsing with the actors too much, more than just to learn their lessons, and if you rehearse with them several days, some new process in the actors' minds starts. An intellectual process, I think, and that process can be very good, but it's very dangerous for filming because you have something in his eyes suddenly, some sort of "Now I do that" and "I do that" and "I do that." He's conscious of what he's doing. He has to do it intuitively.

Along those same lines, can you tell some of the similarities and differences in working in the theatre and the cinema?

BERGMAN: Oh, it's absolutely different. Filmmaking is a neurotic job; it's abnormal to every creative process I know. It's some sort of craftsmanship. You must have a lot of physical power to make a picture. We make three minutes of the picture a day; the terrible thing is, they are three minutes of the picture. If you are at the theatre you will rehearse–in Sweden we have about ten or twelve weeks of rehearsal–we start slowly at ten-thirty in the morning and then we go on and it's very lousy and you can sit down and relax; everybody feels that "this is not good today but perhaps next Monday or in the middle of next month we will find out." The creative process is natural, unneurotic.

When you are the film director who has written the script yourself, you have to be some sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because if Dr. Jekyll has written the script Mr. Hyde has to direct it, and I tell you they don't like each other that well. I think that is a very schizophrenic situation.

In the theatre, we are a group of artists who just come together–it's fantastic; we come together in a house that is built for us to work in. Everything is very important: we come there like very effective, efficient children with our books. At ten-thirty a bell rings and we all go to our rehearsal rooms–and then we are there together with Strindberg or Ibsen or Molière or Shakespeare or any other of those old, marvelous gentlemen, with our thoughts, our emotions, and we have the opportunity to go into it and live with it and try to understand the wisdom of the drama that we are working with.

If I had to make a choice–God save me from that–if somebody came to me and said, "Now, Ingrnar, you have long enough made film and theatre; you have to make your decision," I am sure I would choose the theatre. Because in the theatre if you grow old and stuffy and dusty you have a lot of experience, and if you can just pronounce your experience in some crazy words the artists will understand you and you will have a wonderful time with them. My teacher in the theatre was a director who was eighty-five years old and could hardly speak, but still he made wonderful, enormous, incredible performances because his soul was young. But he was absolutely a physical wreck. You can't be a wreck when you work in the studio. Perhaps you are, but it's dangerous.

When I was a teacher in the dramatic school in Sweden, with the pupils of the first class we started with a discussion of what you need to make theatre. On the blackboard we wrote down about a hundred things: stage, actors, tickets, clothes, money, spotlights, footlights, makeup, theatre–more than a hundred different things that we thought we needed. And then I said to them, "Now we take away everything that you think is not necessary." And we went on and went on and went on; we even took away the director. And three things remained. What do you think they were?

Actors.

BERGMAN: An actor, yes, that's true.

An empty place. A stage.

BERGMAN: It's not necessary.

A script.

BERGMAN: A manuscript, yes. A message. We could call it a message, don't you think so? Two. And a third?

An audience.

BERGMAN: An audience, yes. The class wasn't sure that the audience was necessary, but I thought it was absolutely necessary. And that is my theology about theatre: what we need are actors, a message, and an audience. If we have those three things we have a performance. Because the performance is not here on the stage; it is in the hearts of the audience. It is very important to know that. In filmmaking we can learn a lot from the theatre, because what we need to make a picture is just that little fantastic machine, the camera, and some film, the negative. That is all.

Just before you start filming, when you get to the set, you said you know as little about the film as the actors do.

BERGMAN: But remember, I have written the script. I have lived with this script perhaps for one or two years. The preparation for the next day, in details, I wait with it as long as possible. Of course, when I made The Magic Flute [his film of Mozart's opera] we had to prepare everything before.

You use women as your main characters quite a lot, and I was wondering how you relate to them, how you identify with them? Your male characters aren't very much in the foreground.

BERGMAN: I like more to work with women. I have many good friends who are actors and I like tremendously to work together with them, but in filmmaking it's a job for good nerves and I think the women have much better nerves than men have. It's so. I think the problems very often are the common problems. They are not, on the first hand, women; they are human beings. And God forgive me, but I have the feeling that the prima donnas always are male. I think it has to do with our whole social life and the male part and the female part that they have to play, and it's very difficult to be an actor; it's not so difficult to be an actress in our society.

Would you just talk a little more about what you say to an actor? Do you do exercises with them?

BERGMAN: No, no, no, no. Good heavens, no. I say nothing. I promise.

Do you tell them the message of the film?

BERGMAN: No, good heavens, no. No, no, no, no. I don't know anything about messages or symbols or things like that. Sometimes when I have the message everything goes wrong. So we don't talk about those things. We just talk professionally: "Be careful. Be slower. Don't be in a hurry. Listen." You know, the most important of all is the ear–the ear for the director and the ear for the actors. Listen to each other. Very often when I see a scene I just close my eyes and listen, because if it sounds right it also looks right. It's very strange.

Now we have only a minute to conclude this, to me, wonderful meeting, but I wanted just to add something. Perhaps it sounds like an old uncle, but I am, so it doesn't matter. May I give you an advice?

Yes, please.

BERGMAN: It is a relief to me to know that if I have an intention, if I have a passion and an obsession, if I want to tell somebody something and if I want to touch somebody, the film helps me. But if I have nothing to say and I just want to make a film, I don't make the film. It's so stimulating, the craftsmanship of filmmaking is so terribly stimulating, dangerous, and obsessing, so you can be very tempted...but if you have nothing to come with, try to be honest with yourself and don't make the picture. If you have something to come with, if you have emotion and passion, a picture in your head, a tension–even if you aren't very technical–the strange thing is that having worked on the script and having worked with the camera for days and days, suddenly when you have cut it together, the thing you wanted to tell is there.

I have a very good example, Antonioni's L'Avventura (Italy, 1960). The picture is a mess–he had no idea where to put the camera; he had no money; the actors went away; I think he had enormous problems the whole time–but he wanted to tell us something about the loneliness of the human being, and I can see this picture time after time and I don't know what touches me most: how he succeeds without knowing how to do it or what he wants to say. That is very important; that is the most important of all. You have to have something to come with, to give other people.

Picturemaking is some sort of responsibility, that is what I think.