Even before the season at the Royal Dramatic Theatre ended, Ingmar Bergman was working on his new movie, Hour of the Wolf.

Last Monday he experienced, for the first time in three and a half years, the joy of heading directly out to Film City without first having things to do at the theatre. On that day, he laboured over two films. He edited the last part of Persona and held a production meeting to prepare for the shoot of Hour of the Wolf, which began the next morning.

The two films maintain some similarities. Both emerged from a big project, The People Eaters, which Bergman was to have made last summer on the island of Väderö in Halland. That aborted project gave birth to these.

Hour of the Wolf takes place in and around an isolated cottage near Hovs Hallar. Liv Ullmann plays a pregnant woman. Max von Sydow is her husband. Other roles are played by Ulf Johansson, Gudrun Brost, Erland Josephson, and Naima Wifstrand.

After four days in a studio at Film City, the crew travels on Whitsunday Eve to Hovs Hallar for two weeks of exterior shooting. In anticipation of the new movie, Bergman provided some insight into his relationship with film and theatre.

For three years Bergman has devoted most of his time to theatre. Now he has returned to film. Has he tired of theatre? Or has the desire to make film overpowered him?

"I took the job as theatre director because I thought theatre had a true significance, that I was there to manage something. I didn't do it primarily for my own sake, but because I felt that it had value in and of itself.

"The films I make are entirely for my own sake, in the same way that I think an artist paints a painting or an author writes a book for his own sake."

There is another difference between working with theatre and with film, namely between re-creation and creation. In films Ingmar Bergman works with his own material from start to finish. From idea to premiere he is driven by an inner need. Or, rather, the film drives him.

Theatre–my career

"In the theatre I am first and foremost a professional. There I am not so much concerned with inspiration, because I do not need to feel an emotional affinity for the play. It is the professional execution that interests me.

"In the past I felt an urge to do certain plays, so I did them, and I felt less interest in other plays, and those I didn't do. Now I think that a good piece of theatre is always fun to produce, no matter what it is."

And if it were your own script?

"These days I would never be able to produce my own play. I would be too mortally embarrassed to work every day with my own text. In the theatre it is always an actor's creation that the director attends to. In film there is always a mixture of actors, director, camera, sound, the whole machine. For me that difference is now definitive. Film is personal. Theatre is objective."

But even film can become impersonal. Once it is completed, it is gone, says Bergman. A couple of years ago he said in an interview that for this very reason film is uninteresting. He can't oversee the effects; he can't be concerned about whether or not a thousand people on Formosa see his film. But it does matter to him, he said then, if twenty people from Farsta make the trip to the Dramaten.

"Of course...I am vain and want to be loved. It's great if a film does well and people like it. But the moment a film has gone far enough to reach another's consciousness, it becomes uninteresting."

It hasn't always been like this, but it has become more so over the course of 21 years in filmmaking.

"I think that the negative response to Winter Light was the first blow. I was very close to that film, but it was maligned and audiences turned away from it. That was the only time I felt that I had succeeded in making a film the way I truly wanted to make it.

"And then this loathsome fuss surrounding The Silence, where people lost sight of the essentials in favour of inessentials."

Now, in anticipation of the Persona premiere this fall, Bergman says he is less vulnerable. Not much is known yet about it, other than that it concerns a sick woman and her caregiver and that it is about identity and transformation. The Latin word "persona" refers to an actor's mask. "It's an exciting film," says Bergman hesitantly, "but you shouldn't ask me what it's about."

There are some clues in the word "cinematography." Bergman originally wanted to call the film simply Cinematography.

The great fascination

"That's the way it is. It's my form of cinematography. For me cinematography is first and foremost close-ups. People's faces. I notice that this is what fascinates me more and more, and what I experience as unceasingly exciting. And it's not primarily just any faces, but those of the actors.

"Because as an actor deals with existing or agreed-upon material, he creates new dimensions and new secrets. And I feel that you get much further, the actor gets much further, when he deals with something concrete rather than with improvisation. As soon as he can work on a concrete idea, he moves from his own personality into a sort of anonymity. He hides himself behind a role and, in this way, can become much more naked, much more ruthless. An actor rarely wants to be private. Privacy makes him shy. But when he is given a 'yes' or a 'no' or three lines from the telephone book, he can be completely ruthless and give of himself in a way that he never can with something he himself has been a part of creating.

"I am fascinated by how, in a given moment, the blood may rush to an actor's face, or his gaze suddenly change–how he takes on an irrational, secretive tone of voice, whose source is completely mysterious. This, in the end, becomes what's essential.

"You can never force or entice or seduce actors. Their performances are a matter of a security and a freedom that can only come from the actors themselves."

Robert Bresson, the Frenchman, who has also been financed by Svensk Filmindustri, showed his film in Cannes a week or so ago and spoke about his film aesthetic. He believes in the necessity of using non-actors in film. Bresson, discussing his work, also used the word "cinematography."

"I think that Bresson is superb, even though his films don't mean anything to me. Nevertheless, I admire him as I admire any artist who carries out his vision without compromise and with passion. That's worthy of respect in today's international film market, with this insane commercialization. You see people get twisted. They become commercialized and afraid. I have felt that fear often. And deep inside me, there is probably some left...it would be terrible to be robbed of my livelihood. But then I have theatre, my profession. It is a great security, because–as I've said now and then–every film is my last film."

Why do they whine?

In saying this, Bergman does not mean to attack the Swedish film climate. He gets almost angry when he hears words like "overproduction" and "uniformity." WE ARE DOING WELL in this complete freedom. Peter Kylberg makes a film according to his sensibilities and can have it shown at the city's quality cinema. Jörn Donner is permitted to carry stubbornly on. Bo Widerberg exists, with his streak of genius. We have a gold nugget like Jan Troell.

"As long as Sweden can afford to back us, we will continue. That's good, isn't it? It is in this sort of climate that talent can emerge. Then it's a matter of holding on. Making films is a matter of staying alive. And of never becoming afraid. The moment you become afraid, I think you're done for."

In this rich film climate we have a Film School, where Ingmar Bergman is supervisor.

"The whining from film school students surprises me enormously. There's probably no one who has had it as good as they do, with so many opportunities. They attend a school that isn't completed, that will be shaped almost more by the students than by the teachers. Such a school should be formed in a state of excitement, in a big scuffle, but not with whining."

The adventure abroad

Ingmar Bergman has repeatedly turned down opportunities to work abroad. He says that his work environment is Sweden, that he has no need to look elsewhere. But in this era of co-productions, the plea will surely come again–Make a film abroad!

"But then I would want to bring with me my own coworkers. Without them I wouldn't want to make a film.

"It would perhaps be fun some day to make an English-language film, provided I can work under circumstances where I am allowed to make it as I want and not as others want.

"That's an adventure that maybe I should experience one day."