On March 14, 15 and 16, 1990, Ingmar Bergman welcomed us each afternoon in his office of the Stockholm Royal Dramatic Theatre where, having renounced cinema, he devotes himself to the stage. It isn't that he's completed his work, rather he is freed from it. And can now enjoy the silence. Or an inconsequential conversation in which he would be free to chat, digress, to take other paths inside one of the richest, most audacious body of work ever produced by cinema.

O.A. and S.B.

1. On Victor Sjöström

I learned much from Victor Sjöström. He was the artistic director of the studio when I began, he would come to see me from time to time and he was benevolent. He saw the rushes, he was very, very intelligent and very clever. He would appear–never on set, nor during the shoot–and he would say: "Hello...how are you Ingmar? All's well? – Yes it is, still making my film... – I know...I saw something..." Then we'd go walking around the studio, it was very beautiful, in the middle of the forest, we'd walk in silence and suddenly, he would say something like: "Don't do such complicated set-ups, your operator can't do it, your actors don't like it and it's too complicated for you. Just set the camera in front of the actor, he'll he happy." He told me many useful things. I admired him tremendously. I admired his films, The Phantom Carriage, and the other ones. I admired him also as an actor, so it was easy for me to pay attention to what he said.

O. Assayas. Did he inspire you for the character of the conductor he plays in To Joy?

No. At that time our relationship was not very good. He did it because I asked him to do it and he agreed. He thought it could be funny, he was a great actor at the time and perhaps he thought it was a good part. But we didn't really have any relationship at that time. However, a few years later, when he played in Wild Strawberries, he situation had changed considerably. He had retired, he was seventy-one years old. he didn't feel very well but he liked the character. As for me, I knew more about cinema and I had time and the interest, because I had more experience, to be gentle with him, to care for him. At the beginning we had serious problems because he was over overacting and when I told him, he became very angry and told me: "If you don't want me, Ingmar, I can leave immediately because the doctor told me my health was poor, it's not good for me to be here and you don't like what I'm doing. Ingmar, I'm not saying that I'm leaving, but if yon want me to go, I'm leaving and I'll he happy to go!" This was at the start, the first day. You can imagine... But day by day, we were able to find our way to communicate and he liked girls, he liked Bibi, he was an old lion you know!... Ingrid Thulin was playing her first leading part and was very discreet, very beautiful and spiritual, Bibi was quite young, terribly sweet and charming and pretty. The girls flirted with him, it was very moving. So when he came in the morning and was in a bad mood, they played with him and he would end up laughing and feeling at ease with them. And there I was, behind... (laughs) Of course I also had the time to sit down with him and have him talk about the past, how he made his films, his impressions, his first day of shooting, his relationship with his cinematographer, his actors and actresses... He told us about A Man There Was, that beautiful film on which he met the charming actress he married, loved, with whom he lived and who died suddenly. He was very much alone, not very friendly, but a genius. I asked him: "When you made The Phantom Carriage, were you aware you were making a masterpiece? - No, I was making my film, that's all. We had little time, a lot of difficulties, some very experimental things and I was playing the main role. I just remember I didn't want to see the rushes and I didn't see them until the end of the shoot. I trusted my cinematographer. I was just making a film." What a beautiful way to make a masterpiece!

2. On Colour

O. Assayas. [...] I'd like to talk about black & white and what you felt when you moved from black & white to colour.

It's the same feeling. You're inviting the audience to create with you. With a silent film, you invite people to hear the voices inside themselves, to create them with you. When you make a film in black & white, which is the most beautiful thing there is, you invite them to see the colours. I think it's also the difference between theatre and cinema. Perhaps you'll recall in Fanny and Alexander that the father, Allan Edwall, is making a speech to the children about the most wondrous chair in the world. And it's right there in the corner of the children's room. And that's the secret of theatre: somebody walks on stage, takes a chair and says: "This chair is the most expensive, the greatest furniture masterpiece in the world! It's ten thousand years old!" All spectators coming to the theatre have made a contract with the actors: we will believe what you say, we will dream with you, we will cry and we will be happy. I think it's very important in cinema to have the audience communicate, to have it participate.

S. Björkman. And you think that colour hinders this...

Colour takes something away. Of course. It's odd, sometimes people mention Smiles of a Summer Night and they tell me: "What beautiful colours!" There are no colours in this film, it was shot in black & white! But we did it as if it were in colour. We worked on a scale going from a very dense black to the shiniest white, it was very precise, tidy. [...]

S. Björkman. When you talk about colour, I think also about From the Life of the Marionettes, which starts in colour then moves to black & white...

There's no meaning to it. I did it for the ZDF. They were paying. I told them that I would do the film in black & white and they weren't very happy. They told me: "Of course, Maestro, do as you wish, but on the other hand the TV audience will think their sets are broken or else, we'll have to make an announcement before they film and they'll say 'Oh! It's in black & white' and they'll switch channels. Therefore could you, PLEASE, do it in colour? We would be very grateful. But the decision is yours to make..." I told myself: "Yes, perhaps I can do it this way, I start the film in colour, no problem, then we move to black & white and no one will notice."

So there you have it, very simple.

O. Assayas. And why did you want to make this film in black & white?

Because it's a black & white film. I don't know why but it's a black & white film. Honestly I must admit that I liked this film very much. I still like it. I know that in France critics revelled in tearing it apart...

O. Assayas. No, I don't think so...

But there was a very very clever critic... no, it wasn't about From the Life of the Marionettes... it was about Autumn Sonata... It must have been someone very subtle, he didn't like the film, and unfortunately, I didn't care for it either. He wrote: "I'm under the impression that Mister Bergman has begun doing like Bergman," and that was on the spot. The disaster with Tarkovsky is when he began doing like Tarkovsky. Fellini, these recent years, has done like Fellini. Buñuel in the last twenty years of his life only did films like Buñuel! And alas, I think that critic was right because I did like Bergman, I hate that film. Bergman hates doing films like Bergman and I think he's the only one... No, I think the French didn't care much for From the Life of the Marionettes. I think that at the time I was still out of fashion...

3. On Exile

O. Assayas. Do you believe exile was a creative experience?

Yes and no. It's very difficult to say whether it would have been better to have stayed at home, to stay here. When speaking of the catastrophe which befell me, I sometimes told my wife: "It will either kill me or, perhaps, do me a great deal of good." Today I'm not sure what it was, I think I lost at least three years from my most creative period. I'll tell you something odd. Before this fiscal problem, which became a complete nightmare for me, from a human perspective–you can't imagine what it was!–two months before, I knew nothing... We knew nothing... We didn't suspect anything... All was in order, every was going perfectly well... We were a circle of friends and we enjoyed gathering at Bibi Andersson's. She had a large house, it was ten, twelve of us and we gathered every two months, six times a year. Once, we decided to invite a medium because we had discussed calling on spirits. Socially, we were all from very different backgrounds. There was a very famous priest, actors, musicians, all kinds of people. The medium came and we had a séance. It was somewhat stupid, somewhat interesting and certain things happened which are impossible to explain. But after–the medium was an old woman, fat, small, with an unusual face, I'd never met her–she took me by the arm, and led me to the kitchen and told me: "Come in Mister Bergman," then, very shy, very polite: "Mister Bergman, I don't know if I should tell you this, but I have the feeling that you want to know. The time you have left is very short, two to three months at most, and then you will depart...you will leave existence." I was standing there, I told her: "Thank you very much...very interesting..." (laughs) I didn't know what to say... It wasn't only about being a fraud you see, there was something very strange about this woman. She said certain things to some of the people who had been there that she had no way of knowing. So, in a certain way... I don't think I took her seriously... but in any case... it was interesting, odd. And three months later there came the catastrophe, and it completely changed my existence. I left everything. I was so furious that I wanted to leave everything behind.

O. Assayas. Did you come in contact with spirits?

No, no, it doesn't interest me at all...

O. Assayas. You don't believe in them...

Yes and no. I think that some people have a kind of parabola around them and we all have a kind of atmosphere around us, and time doesn't exist: what happened, present and future, are but the same instant, a now. We carry with us millions and billions of tiny particles. Of course we do! Its too difficult to explain in a language other than one's own. But it's obvious, some are made in such a way that their parabola allows them to catch some of those particles and to talk about it. In my case, I knew absolutely nothing. I was so preoccupied with having a perfect financial situation that I paid what was necessary in order to have the best accountants. I couldn't suspect anything. But if you consider everything as a now, she forecasted that it would happen, she anticipated this instinctively. There's nothing odd in that.

O. Assayas. Do you think cinema can capture something like that?

No. Or yes, we can capture everything, but we need to transpose it. You can turn it into a fairy tale or a horror film, what you like, but to render it seriously is unachievable. If I attempted to transpose to cinema what happened to me, I couldn't do it, it would be impossible.

O. Assayas. What I meant was: do you think cinema can transcribe the particles surrounding people?

We talked about Harriet Andersson. I think the camera likes the particles around Harriet and that it accepts them. It's the only way. It's too complicated to talk about this... (pause) The cinematograph is... It's very easy and very difficult to create dreams in cinema. I was able to do it a few times and it truly fascinates me. Tarkovsky, when he wasn't doing like Tarkovsky, did it remarkably. The Mirror is one of the most remarkable films ever made. Yesterday we spoke of Sunrise. Sunrise is a fairy tale, a soap opera, and it's a dream at die same time. And what fascinates me isn't the soap opera, it's not the fairy tale, it's the dream. I think if you decide to shoot a dream and you tell yourself: "I will direct a dream, with the camera and all the machines at my disposal, I will create it," you'll never be able to. But if you simply tell your story, it can be a wonderful dream. When I started taking notes to write Autumn Sonata, it was a dream around a mother and her daughter in three different lights, day light, night time and the morning light. That was all. Just the two of them and three lights, no explanations, no story. A movement, or rather three movements like in a sonata. It was the starting point and it was a dream. Then after, you know... as you move on, it changes, the first instinctive idea, very good, changes a little and suddenly you're left with a trivial story–boom, boom, boom–with explanations, scenes... it's very odd. We work against our intuition, our instinct because the medium, film, is so heavy, the workload is so heavy that we feel the need for a very firm foundation. In your film Winter's Child, there are some lovely parts, very dream-like and I think you have a real talent for that. But be careful!

O. Assayas. I've always had the feeling that any film was a dream in one way or another.

Some yes. And perhaps even more than you might think. But alas, that time, I changed my dream into a stupid reality and it was a complete failure.

4. On Dream and Work

O. Assayas. There are many breaking points in your career, moments in which you radically transformed your approach to cinema, your way of making films. One of the most striking is Through a Glass Darkly. It's the first of the chamber films, with yet again a reference to Strindberg. And you invent a new way of making films...

Olivier... there's something important and t didn't understand it until very late: Through a Glass Darkly belongs to a previous period. The true break is located between Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light. I'm unfortunately responsible for that misunderstanding, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence do not form a trilogy. Through a Glass Darkly belongs to the previous period, then comes the break. I looked again at my early films and in particular at Through a Glass Darkly and I had to accept the fact that this film represented a moral failure for me, a total disaster and that I had to change everything, throw away the first part of my work as a filmmaker and start anew. The time has come now to separate these films. Because Through a Glass Darkly is tired, very sentimental, romantic. There are some magnificent things, with Harriet, but it belongs to the fifties.

O. Assayas. There are some extraordinary scenes...

Yes, but the technique belongs to the previous period. After that first period, Sven Nykvist and I told each other: "We can't go on like this..."

S. Björkman. It's true, there's a radical transformation, and also concerning the style. One had the feeling that from Winter Light you're heading toward a simpler and more poetic aesthetic.

It's a complete change and the break is there, between those two films. Therefore there's no trilogy. The trilogy was an invention for the media. It's a secret I'm now revealing to you! I never told it to anyone, but it's the truth.

O. Assayas. When did you write Winter Light? How did you have the idea for the film and how did it evolve?

It had a lot to do with my father. I tried to understand the difficulties he would have had in his life. And it was time for me to do away with all this religious confusion and finally be honest with myself. I wrote in Laterna Magica how the ending of Winter Light came to me. I was with my father... on Sundays we took my car, I accompanied him on his rounds, I listened to his sermons. All is in my book, you can read it... I worked a lot on Winter Light. The film had different forms, it went through many transformations. It was a struggle, because when you're an old whore, it's difficult to remove all the make-up. But it was necessary, it was very healthy and I had to do it.

O. Assayas. How did your father react to your films in general and that one in particular?

I think my father and mother saw my films. Some films. Generally, I was the one to tell them "You can go see this one or please don't go see that one." But I have the feeling that my mother was so curious that she also saw the films I didn't want her to see. We didn't talk much about it. My mother died before my father, my father lived alone for four years. And before she died, my mother was very ill, she had three heart strokes. I would go to the hospital to visit her and we'd talk a lot. She was, with all the reserve of a pastor's wife, a very strong and emotional woman, interested in many things. We became very close the last three years of her life. And when my father was left by himself, I had to help for practical things, help him financially... We became friends. My father was very shy, the opposite of my mother. Very shy... But not in his work... In his work, I think he was a genius, but in his life he was very nervous, very quiet and reserved. But we liked each other. I built an entire life hating him and in the last years of his life, we became close, real friends. I tried to find topics in common, things to talk about.... I was very touched, very moved by his honesty, suddenly he became brutally frank with me. He removed the mask and we were able to sit down and talk about our lives, it truly moved me. But I don't think my films entertained my parents. Of course they liked the fact that I was famous, that people would come up to my mother and ask her: "What's it like to be the mother of a great man?" She loved that... (laughs) But when I was a little boy I was quite alone, it was a very complex relationship, I talk about it in Laterna Magica. She was a charming woman, then it took us a lifetime... We separated, I think she hated me. I hated her, we had great difficulties with each other. Later we tried to understand each other, to find each other again, but only during the last three years of her life. The situation was reversed because I was the adult and she could finally let herself go and be a little girl. It was very beautiful. In her days she was a very beautiful woman. Perhaps you know this, it's a blessing in life to be able to become friends with your parents. Because they go away before you realize they are human beings, before you can establish a friendship with them, they will remain characters throughout your life. And through out your life, something unresolved will remain.

O. Assayas. Did this late reconciliation with your parents have an influence on your inspiration?

Olivier, you've used this word inspiration three or four times... I don't believe in inspiration. You come from another culture and you're a young man. I think that inspiration is a romantic idea, the idea that things come from God. But if you don't believe in any God, if you simply believe in your work and not in inspiration, then you believe in your own creative imagination, in your experience, how you apply yourself. I believe in application. I'm very pedantic and I try, at least in my work, to be honest.

S. Björkman. Then you also apply yourself during the night, because you dream and that sometimes dreams become...

No, that's below, in the kitchens... it's your unconscious working at night, when you dream... It isn't application. Something else is happening. But inspiration is something that comes from outside while what I'm doing comes from inside. It can come from thoughts brought on by life, things that happen to you, that people tell you, this extraordinary quality reality holds... So, no inspiration! Only application!