REILLY: When you make a film, do you make the film consciously for Sweden?

BERGMAN: Yes. My language is Swedish and my audience is my Swedish people. But I don't think it's so different. When I make a picture I never think about an audience. I want to explain something to somebody. It's a conversation between me and the audience. It's a sort of contact. I want to get into contact with other people and my way of getting contact with other people is my pictures. It's very simple.

REILLY: Bo Widerberg recently said you didn't treat problems relevant to the Swedish society. I asked him what he meant by that and he said when he made Raven's End, he had treated a social issue he had criticized you for not attempting.

BERGMAN: I admire him very much. I think he is a very talented man. If he does the films he wants to do, I don't care. I think I am part, a very small part, of this society, and my way of expressing myself is not going right into social criticism. But, of course, I express the time in which I am living. I am expressing the Sweden of today. But not in a limited way. Not in just this dimension, as he meant it. I think every artist...I think Picasso, when he makes his ceramics, expresses something of his time. I never understand this silly way of telling artists what they have to do. Of course, if we don't discuss the artists, what will we discuss? But I think this is very foolish, to tell artists what they have to do and to blame them when they don't do it. I think it is a little bit Russian. You know what they told Shostakovich? I think it was about his fifth symphony or something. It was, "please Mr. Shostakovich, please rewrite part of your symphony. It's not socialistic." I think you can criticize everything, but not the way an artist chooses to work...If his approach or his product is not alive, you can criticize him. But if it has some life, if it is a living child of his imagination, I think it is very greedy to criticize him because his child is not the child you expected. It is still a child. It is a living thing.

REILLY: Do you feel there is a "Bergman tradition" in Sweden? This is a term used quite frequently; for instance, critics said Mai Zetterling's film was Bergmanesque. Do you feel conscious of this in Sweden?

BERGMAN: No, not at all. When I started making my pictures twenty-two to twenty-three years ago, I was very impressed by the French. I was impressed by the films of Carné, and I was impressed by a very good friend of mine who was ten years older–Alf Sjöberg. He creates wonderful scenes. I always admired him very much and I was assistant on one of his pictures. When I started myself I tried to make pictures like him because I admired him. All the young Swedish people like Godard, Malle, and Antonioni. They try to make their pictures like them. Perhaps somebody, without knowing it, likes my way of making pictures and starts making films like mine. And then suddenly you find your own way of making films–your own style. But in the beginning you have no style. Nobody has his own style in the beginning. Because everything in art must grow up from something. Always in art there is something before. There is some sort of tradition. If we believe that we are cut off from the tradition we are being very silly. I am absolutely convinced that nothing in art has grown up from its own roots. It has had its roots in something other than itself.

REILLY: Do you ever become conscious of what other directors are doing? For instance, do you ever wonder how Antonioni is using film language, or syntax, to approach what he is saying?

BERGMAN: Yes. I am always terribly interested in such artists and I always like to know. I admire Fellini very much. I love him and I love his way of making films. Just his way of handling material. I think it's so wonderful. It's so generous. I love it. It's so warm and enormously generous. And I always see his films four or five times to see how they're made because the first time I am always like a child who just accepts. The second and other times I can start to see how it is made. But I will never make a Fellini film. I am too old. I have my own way of making films. I have my own style. My style is far away from the Fellini style. But I think we have some sort of very strange contact.

REILLY: I suspect that of the directors we were talking of before, the impact at the moment on some of the younger directors is Godard particularly. How do you regard his films?

BERGMAN: I only like one of his pictures, The Married Woman. I think it was a very warm, sensible, humorous, and strong film. I admire him very much because he goes his own way, and his way of making pictures is to me very strange. I don't understand his pictures. But I like very much that he has his own imagination. He has absolutely his own way. I think he is a genius, a journalistic genius. Yes, he writes with his pictures and I think it's marvelous but I don't understand it.

REILLY: There must be tremendous pressure, particularly when you become successful, to make a film that doesn't come from you but comes from someone else. Do you feel this sort of pressure?

BERGMAN: Do you know what Goethe said? It's terribly difficult to translate. He said, "please, God, let me scandalize myself in time." It is when you have a success. I think it's much more dangerous for you to have successes than to have failures. If you are very young and have success it's most dangerous. If you are older and have success I think it's necessary and very good, sometimes, because you know what it is worth. I always think, "good heavens, give me always some real failures to brush myself up." Do you understand what I mean? For an artist it's terribly difficult to have success always and it's also terribly dangerous to have disasters, catastrophes, scandals, and failures always. But I think it is very good for an artist to sometimes have success, sometimes never be sure. If you build your house and you like your house very much or if you like your sofa too much, when you start your new picture perhaps you think you must make it so you can get another sofa, or at least so that you can still have the sofa. You should think only of your picture, not your sofa, your children, your wife, or anything else. It's very comfortable to have the sofa. You can like it as long as you have it but not be imprisoned by it. Your loyalty is to your work. You can love people, children, wornen, sofas, houses, and everything. You have to have things you can love–things and human beings. You must know that one day you perhaps must go away from things you love because they have imprisoned you. I think it is very simple. It's just an experience. Perhaps one day you have to leave picture-making too, because you have nothing more to say.

REILLY: Perhaps we can talk about the way you approach a film.

BERGMAN: It's very difficult to talk about a film I'm just preparing because I want to be away from it. You can discuss technical details, but what it is about, that is very difficult, because you have written it and you have to transform yourself from a writer to a director. When you start directing it you have to forget that you have written it. If you remember too much that you have written it you can suddenly feel very ashamed or very frightened, so I think you have to be far away from the work, between writing and directing. Not think too much about it. When I write the script I always have some sort of feeling, some sort of picture inside. I feel the tensions and everything. A week or two before the shooting I start to re-read the script and often the pictures have changed and have another dimension; since I have written it I can't understand why I have written it, so it's very difficult. I haven't started yet to re-read the script.

REILLY: When you film a scene, do you have a script concerned with every movement of the actor, or do you evolve some of this from the situation as you shoot?

BERGMAN: I have always prepared very closely. I hate to come to the set without preparations. It is impossible for me, but if I have prepared and learned my lesson very well, I can go away secure, ready to make another scene. If not, if I haven't prepared, I can't go away from the script. I have to prepare before I shoot.

REILLY: When you shoot a scene do you allow for different angles, positions of the camera, that you might wish to add later?

BERGMAN: Never. I hate that. I don't want to have the possibility to choose when I am cutting the picture. When I sit down to cut it, it's a sport. The choice must be made before in the studio. I never like to make the choice afterwards.

REILLY: Do you find yourself re-writing sequences when you actually start to film?

BERGMAN: No, Perhaps I cut out some sequences. You always write too much and it's very good to have too much material and then take it away. But when the actors are there, you get the contact with the actors.

REILLY: You reshot a large segment of Persona when you changed locations. Was this because you had changed your mind about the script or simply found a better place to shoot?

BERGMAN: Yes. Persona was a very strange thing because I wrote the script without thinking of anything. I just wrote it and it was very complicated for me to understand what I had written. I had to reshoot some scenes two or three times before when I was on location. We made it once again and that time I thought it was all right. That was very complicated. But it was charming and nice because there were just two actors and it did not cost too much. I did not feel too guilty. You always feel it's not your money–not my money. I don't spend my money. I spend the money of the company. When I was young they always told me that I spent company money and now I think there's still a little guilt.

REILLY: You could, I'm sure, if you choose, make a film in the United States with a much larger budget. You don't feel restricted in any way by....?

BERGMAN: No at all. I am absolutely free. I like very much to be limited. I like the limits of the Swedish costs. I like to know if a film costs about one million crowns ($250,000). I think we will get it back and that's a very good feeling.

REILLY: Have you concerned yourself with the economics of your films? Do you feel it's important for your films to make money in Sweden?

BERGMAN: Yes. Why not? Of course I am very interested that my pictures not only make money but that people will see my pictures. But the angles are different. Sometimes the points of view are different. When I made The Communicants (Winter Light) or Persona or The Silence, I said to myself, "not many people will go from their homes when there is snow to see these pictures." When I made other pictures I felt very unsatisfied or very disappointed if people didn't see them.

REILLY: Why did you have someone else do the script of The Virgin Spring and Brink of Life?

BERGMAN: I think I was lazy. I liked the writer who wrote the scripts. I felt good contact and we liked the scenes very much. And I was lazy.

REILLY: You said once writing was a very difficult period for you.

BERGMAN: Very boring. Because to dream is not difficult but to put it in words is very boring. I don't like the words. I always feel them unsatisfying.

REILLY: That sounds a little strange coming from a person who started expressing himself in writing.

BERGMAN: It is always the same thing. If you sit down after dinner you can listen to a concert on records or watch The Long Hot Summer on T.V. Of course, you sit down and see The Long Hot Summer. Instead of reading a theosophic book you watch television because everything for your eyes is more fascinating than reading or using words.

REILLY: Have you ever directed any of your writings in the theatre?

BERGMAN: Yes. When I was very young, but never more. It was terrible to sit, day after day. It was a terrible thing.

REILLY: How do you mean that?

BERGMAN: I can't explain. But I don't like it. You have to be very careful with actors. For me, at the theatre, the actors are secure because they know, if I can't make it today I can make it tomorrow or next week. It doesn't matter. The only thing we need is patience. On the set and in the studio we have no time; we have to get it just this moment. They have to jump over so many steps in the creative process so you have to be very careful to practice some sort of technique. I have my technique and Bo Widerberg has his technique. He always wants to approach reality and I admire his ambition very much. I feel that it's absolutely impossible to catch reality. It's much better to take a mirror and try to choose a very small part of reality and express it with stylization. I can never use non-professionals. Bo Widerberg often uses non-professional actors in his films in order to avoid the need to "return" theatre actors in a film acting style. I always have to use actors. I can't use other people because the real moment, for instance, our presence here is full of expressions, tensions, light, and small movements which I can't remake in a studio with anybody. Of course, I can put the camera here and pick up just this moment with the camera.

REILLY: Does your approach to theatre action differ from your approach to film acting?

BERGMAN: Yes. Rehearsals are sort of exercises for remaking, which is always a problem at the theatre. Every day you make exercises from ten o'clock to two o'clock to prepare the actors for the remaking, so they make exactly the same thing day after day, night after night. That is an absolutely different way of handling the actor. When you are in the studio with the actors it's different because you have to get them to make it now. In this moment. And never more. And I think this way of handling the actors is not very sane. It's insane.

REILLY: When you direct in theatre do you feel the contact is perhaps more immediate? Do you feel you are getting stronger contact because it is a live event?

BERGMAN: No. When I make a film I write it myself. It's a very direct expression of my own dreams and I just tell people about how I feel or what I'm dreaming or what I think. When I direct the theatre I always translate what other writers have dreamt or felt. I have to make it so clear and so very much them and not so very much Ingmar Bergman. I have to discipline my own forces to serve them, not myself, and that is very good exercise.