Aware that Ingmar Bergman is resolutely prompt and also that he would give me not a moment more than the three and one-half hours to which he had agreed, I arrived somewhat early at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, where he had vacated his leadership but not a small office. Into this office, after a walk through seemingly endless corridors, I was ushered by a polite secretary who told me that Mr. Bergman would shortly arrive. While I waited, I examined the room, although one needed less time for that operation than I was granted.

Bergman's office is nearly as cold as the church in Winter Light, but here the austerity is secular and impersonal, rather than menacing. Moreover, the bare white walls are made radiant by light streaming in from the square and nearby seascape, which also bring in the noise of human bustle that served as background for our talk.

The room contains a pallet couch, fronted by a low coffee table (today offering two bottles of mineral water and a box of Droste chocolate), and a comfortable black leather chair, which Bergman first used but which he eventually gave up for the more rigid one that stands near the most important item of furniture: his desk. A colour drawing of the theatre hangs over the nearly empty bookcase (works by Strindberg, Fellini Satyricon, Lenny Bruce's How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, and a few others). The sole remaining ornament, also above the bookcase, is a child's toy: a stuffed red ant.

A few minutes after nine, Bergman strides in with hand extended. He seems uninterested in further introductions, but I am pleased that we can get down to business. During our talk, I am constantly amazed by the variety of expression that passes over his inherently bland face. This variety can no more be captured than the beautiful modulation of his voice, but both are so crucial to our encounter that I have departed from my usual methods in attempting to catch something of its manner, as well as our words.

From the beginning, I interrupted Bergman's sentences, sometimes completing them, sometimes anticipating a response that made me impatient to react. As the interview progressed, this became more frequent, and he also began to interrupt me. I have therefore reproduced nearly all the interruptions, whether of one man by the other or of one man by himself–I have also indicated (how I wish I could actually reproduce) some of the laughter with which Bergman increasingly punctuated the proceedings. For the man is passionate without being dour.

Although I have tried especially hard to capture much of the actuality of this interview, I have, as always, rewritten the text for readability. Bergman's heavily accented English, though very good, frequently falls into error when his mind outpaces his ease in the language. I saw no point in reproducing such errors, but one of them deserves remark. Whereas, midway in our talk, I put the word "tumultuous" in his mouth, what he actually said was "tumultarious," a portmanteau word, accidentally invented, that nonetheless perfectly describes a talk both "tumultuous" and "multifarious" in its concerns.

"Tumultariousness" is obviously meat and drink to Bergman. Even though our conversation absorbed him so that he inadvertently let it run an extra five minutes–thus, as frantic phone calls made clear, disarranging the meticulous schedule that is his daily regimen–when he escorted or rather trotted me to the elevator, he observed, with a broad and affectionate smile, "I think we had such a good talk, don't you?" Not only attending to film and theatre business, he was in town that day, as I later learned, to make arrangements for his fifth wedding, which was to take place during the week.

SAMUELS: Mr. Bergman, I'd like to start with a rather general question: If I were asked to cite a single reason for your preeminence among film directors, I would point to your creation of a special world–the sort of thing we are accustomed to with great creative figures in the other arts, but rarely in film, and never to your degree. You are, in fact, very much like a writer. Why didn't you become one?

BERGMAN: When I was a child, I suffered from an almost complete lack of words. My education was very rigid; my father was a priest. As a result, I lived in a private world of my own dreams. I played with my puppet theatre.

SAMUELS: And–

BERGMAN: Excuse me. I had very few contacts with reality or channels to it. I was afraid of my father, my mother, my elder brother–everything. Playing with this puppet theatre and a projection device I had was my only form of self-expression. I had great difficulty with fiction and reality; as a small child I mixed them so much that my family always said I was a liar. Even when I grew up, I felt blocked. I had enormous difficulty speaking to others and–

SAMUELS: I want to interrupt you for just a moment. This description of your childhood resembles one classic description of the genesis of a writer. Was it only the accident of the puppet theatre that sent you the way of theatre rather than of books?

BERGMAN: No. I remember that during my eighteenth summer, when I had just finished school, suddenly I wrote a novel. And in school, when we had to write compositions, I liked it very much. But I never felt that writing was my cup of tea. I put the novel in my desk and forgot it. But in 1940, suddenly–in the summer–I started writing and wrote twelve–

SAMUELS: Plays.

BERGMAN: Yes. It was a sudden eruption.

SAMUELS: May I offer an hypothesis about this so that you can react to it? Your skill as a writer and your need to express yourself in words are fulfilled more in the theatre and cinema because in these arts one also embodies his words and even sees the audience's response to them.

BERGMAN: My beginning was otherwise, because when I began writing, I was suspicious of words. And I always lacked words; it has always been very difficult for me to find the word I want.

SAMUELS: Is this suspicion of words one of the reasons why Alma makes Elisabeth say "nothing" in Persona?

BERGMAN: No. Yes. In a way. But that wasn't conscious on my part.

SAMUELS: Because "nothing" is the truest word, one that asserts least.

BERGMAN: I don't know. I have always felt suspicious both of what I say and of what others say to me. Always I feel something has been left out. When I read a book, I read very slowly. It takes a lot of time for me to read a play.

SAMUELS: Do you direct it in your head?

BERGMAN: In a way. I have to translate the words into speeches, movements, flesh and blood. I have an enormous need for contact with an audience, with other people. For me, words are not satisfying.

SAMUELS: With a book, the reader is elsewhere.

BERGMAN: When you read, words have to pass through your conscious mind to reach your emotions and your soul. In film and theatre, things go directly to the emotions. What I need is to come in contact with others.

SAMUELS: I see that, but it raises a problem I'm sure you've often discussed. Your films have emotional impact, but since they are also the most intellectually difficult of contemporary films, isn't there sometimes a contradiction between the two effects? Let me give you a specific example. How do you react when I say that while I watched The Rite, my feelings were interfered with by my baffled effort at comprehension?

BERGMAN: Your approach is wrong. I never asked you to understand; I ask only that you feel.

SAMUELS: You haven't asked me anything. I don't see you; I only see the film.

BERGMAN: Yes, but–

SAMUELS: And the film asks me to understand. Here are three performers under investigation for a spectacle that the authorities find obscene. The film continuously makes us wonder what the spectacle means, why the authorities want to suppress it, etc. These questions sit next to me. More and more, I feel them grab me by the throat–better, the head–so that I can't feel anything but puzzlement.

BERGMAN: But that's you.

SAMUELS: It's not the film?

BERGMAN: No. The Rite merely expresses my resentment against the critics, audience, and government, with which I was in constant battle while I ran the [Royal Dramatic] theatre. A year after my resignation from the post, I sat down and wrote this script in five days. I did it merely to free myself.

SAMUELS: But then–

BERGMAN: Excuse please. The picture is just a game, a way of kicking everyone's–not understanding–intellectual–

SAMUELS: To puzzle the audience?

BERGMAN: Exactly. I liked very much to write it and even more to make it. We had a lot of fun while we were shooting. My purpose was just to amuse myself and the audience which liked it. Do you understand what I mean?

SAMUELS: I understand but–

BERGMAN: You must realize–this is very important!–I never ask people to understand what I have made. Stravinsky once said, "I have never understood a piece of music in my life. I always only feel."

SAMUELS: But Stravinsky was a composer. By its nature, music is nondiscursive; we don't have to understand it. Films, plays, poems, novels all make propositions or observations, embody ideas or beliefs, and we go to these forms–

BERGMAN: But you must understand that you are perverted. You belong to a small minority that tries to understand. Ordinary people–and me, too....Look, I have exactly the same feeling when I see a play. It is as if I were hearing a string quartet by Bartok. I never try to understand. I, too, am a little perverted, so I, too, on one level, control myself. Because I am a man of the theatre, a professional, and this can–

SAMUELS: Destroy spontaneous response?

BERGMAN: Exactly. But it never does, because I feel that especially film....You know, they always talk about Brecht's being so intellectual.

SAMUELS: Whereas he's very emotional.

BERGMAN: Yes. His own comments and those of his commentators come between us and the plays. Music, films, plays always work directly on the emotions.

SAMUELS: I must disagree. My two favourites among your films–though there are about ten that I think excellent–are Persona and Winter Light. Each of these films works as you say a film should, but neither is like The Rite. I'd therefore like to compare them so as to explore the problem of a film that is too puzzling to be evocative. Let me start with Winter Light, which I think your purest film. By the way, do you like it?

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: Although the film raises questions about what the hero thinks and about what he and his mistress represent as different ways of life, the drama is so compelling, the images so powerful that we don't sit there–I didn't sit there, perverted though I am–and say, "What does this mean?" I was caught. Winter Light typifies one of the ways you are at your best; in it, the audience's concern for the fate of the characters is more intense than any puzzlement about their significance. Do you see what I mean?

BERGMAN: Yes. But I think you are wrong.

SAMUELS: Why?

BERGMAN: Because...because...when you say, "I like Winter Light and Persona, and I think these are two of the best you have made," then you say "we," and then you confuse "I" and "we," and you make generalizations, whereas for everyone, Persona and Winter Light are, I think, my most difficult pictures. So it is impossible for you to take this point of view.

SAMUELS: I'll stop mixing "I" and "we"–

BERGMAN: I must tell you, I must tell you before we go onto more complicated things: I make my pictures for use! They are not made sub specie aeternitatis; they are made for now and for use. They are like a table, or mineral water, or a flower, or a lamp, or anything that is made for someone who wants to use it. Also, they are made to put me in contact with other human beings, to whom I give them and say, "Please use them. Take what you want and throw the rest away. I will come back and make other new and beautiful things. If this was not successful, it doesn't matter." My impulse has nothing to do with intellect or symbolism; it has only to do with dreams and longing, with hope and desire, with passion. Do you understand what I mean? So when you say that a film of mine is intellectually complicated, I have the feeling that you don't talk about one of my pictures. Let us talk about the pictures, not as one of the best, or the most disgusting, or one of the stinking ones; let us talk about attempts to come in contact with other people.

SAMUELS: I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear. We started with The Rite, and I said, "This is a film that I think...."

BERGMAN: I'm not interested in what you think! If you like, ask me questions! But I'm not interested in hearing what you think!

SAMUELS: I'm not trying to tell you what I like or dislike for the purpose of giving you my opinion but for the purpose of raising questions. I won't say "I" anymore. Let's name a man X; I'll ask you about what X might want to know. Let's say that while watching The Rite, X isn't as emotionally–

BERGMAN: No! It's clear! This is completely uninteresting! The Rite has been seen by millions of people who think....It's completely uninteresting if one doesn't like....You know, I live on a small island. The day after The Rite was shown on Swedish television, a man came to me on the ferryboat going to the island and said, "It was a nice play. Don't you think it was a nice play? My wife and I, we laughed and laughed, and we had a tremendous evening together." I was completely confused; as we would judge it, he had completely misunderstood the play. But he enjoyed himself! Perhaps he had been drunk; perhaps he had gone to bed with the old girl; perhaps he was being ironic. But he enjoyed coming to me and saying it was nice. Do you understand? So we must find some way of communicating. It's very important. If we continue this way, we will get nothing. We must find some sort of human communication, because if we don't, you only make me irritated and I just want to finish. You know, I can sit down here and discuss everything in an intellectual way. I can say the most astonishing things because I am perfect at giving interviews. But I think we could find another way–do you understand–a sort of human–

SAMUELS: Haven't you noticed that I've ignored all my prepared questions?

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: I have been trying to respond to what you say as you say it. I have been trying to communicate. Please, by all means, tell me when I seem to be going astray. But, my God, Mr. Bergman, I've told you....Look, I have a job: interviewing and writing about you. You've done the most important job already: You've made the films. But despite what you've said, I think there are people who would like help in understanding your films. I want, to the best of my abilities, with whatever aid you'll give me, to work for those people.

BERGMAN: Of course. I understand very well that you're trying to reach contact, but this way you've started will only keep us sitting like two puppets discussing absolute nonsense–to me, it is completely uninteresting and, to everybody, completely uninteresting. Please let's try–

SAMUELS: Let me suggest two alternatives, and you say which you'd prefer.

BERGMAN: No! Go on!

SAMUELS: No! I want to make human contact also. Here are the two ways: A few moments ago, you said you met this man who liked The Rite, yet you were surprised because–

BERGMAN: He didn't say he liked it; he said he had a nice evening. Perhaps he was being ironic. But I liked his way of approaching, you know....It was sort of....He used my play. He used it.

SAMUELS: Wouldn't you care to know why he found it useful?

BERGMAN: That is irrelevant. He used it! Why and how people use are interesting to hear–as with The Touch, which got extreme responses: People either liked it or hated it. I like to hear about The Touch because it was not the picture I intended to make–for many reasons–especially the actors. You know that actors often change a film, for better or worse.

SAMUELS: May I ask you how the film differs from the one you intended?

BERGMAN: I intended to paint the portrait of an ordinary woman, in which everything around her would be a reflection. I wanted her in close-up and the surroundings clear only when near her. I wanted the portrait to be very detailed and very lovely and true. But when I joined the actors, they liked the plot more than I did, and I think they seduced me away from my original plan. I can't say if the result is better or worse, but it is different. Bibi Andersson is a close friend of mine–a lovely and extremely talented actress. She is totally oriented toward reality, always needing motives for what she does. She is a warm, fantastic woman. To her, everything is important, so she asked that what I wanted out of focus or shadowed be made utterly clear. I'm not criticizing her; I admire and love her. But she changed the film. When I give an actor a part, I always hope that he will join in the creating by adding something I didn't intend. We collaborate. What Bibi Andersson did made the film more comprehensible for common people and more immediately powerful. I agreed with all her changes.

SAMUELS: May I ask about a moment in the film that–I think–is very good? It sounds, from what you say, as if Bibi Andersson was behind it. Karin is giving breakfast to her family; everything is close-up, light, warm, gay. Suddenly, there is a jump cut to a long shot of her alone, drinking coffee, in an utterly quiet, utterly empty kitchen. This is a case in which the clarity of the surroundings immediately makes us understand her. Now we know why she goes to David.

BERGMAN: I think this scene is mine, because the film was made about a woman I actually know. This transition from warmth to complete loneliness is typical of her whole life–and of every woman's life. That is why every woman laughs while watching that part of the film.

SAMUELS: Do you ever do more than change a film for one of your actresses? Do you ever actually conceive of one to give her a chance to change? Let me give you an example. In The Naked Night Harriet Andersson plays a woman who epitomizes the power of sex. Then the next film you made, A Lesson in Love, casts her in the role of a tomboy who is afraid of sex. Did you make the later film at all to reverse her performance in The Naked Night?

BERGMAN: I know my actors well. We all are closely involved with each other. I know how many parts each carries within him. One day I write one of the parts the actor can play but never has. Sometimes the actors themselves don't know that they can play it. But without actually telling me, they show me the parts they contain.

SAMUELS: So it is possible for you to write a script because you realize that a particular actress is now ready to play a particular part.

BERGMAN: Exactly. It's fantastic to be surrounded by so many actors, by so many unwritten parts. All the time the actors are giving you material; through their faces, through their movements, their inflections.

SAMUELS: Do you sometimes reverse not only the actor but a whole film in the next one you make?

BERGMAN: I think only a little bit in the relationship between Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light.

SAMUELS: Yes, that's a very interesting case. At the end of Through a Glass Darkly, Björnstrand communicates with his son, who had been longing for such an occurrence. The next year we go back to the movie house, and there is Björnstrand playing, in a sense, his own son, only now more desperately in search of communication with a father (God), who will not or cannot answer him.

BERGMAN: I think that is fascinating, but I never had it in mind. You are right, but what you say astonishes me.

SAMUELS: I'm not crazy?

BERGMAN: No. No. No. You are completely right.

SAMUELS: If you don't mind then, I'd like to get back to Winter Light. I want to ask you–ask you–something to see if I'm right. Isn't it true that whereas you are frequently concerned with the impossibility of attaining corroboration for one's faith, in Winter Light you show that the search for corroboration is itself the cause of harm?

BERGMAN: All the time that I treated the questions of God and ultimate faith, I felt very unhappy. When I left them behind, and also abandoned my enormous desire to make the best film in the world–

SAMUELS: To be God.

BERGMAN: Yes...to...to–

SAMUELS: Make the perfect creation.

BERGMAN: Yes. To make the perfect creation. As soon as I said, here are my limits, which I see very clearly and which I will not jump over but only try to open up–technically–then I became unneurotic–

SAMUELS: Like a research scientist?

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: Isn't that how the drama operates in Persona? After the credit sequence, the film begins realistically. There is a woman in a hospital, suffering a sort of catatonic withdrawal. She is tended by a nurse. Then, as the film progresses, this realistic drama starts to break from inside (at one moment, the film itself shatters). Is it true that like a research scientist, you were investigating in Persona the limits that exist for an artist who wants his imitation of reality to be as true and as complex as reality itself? Don't you say, "Therefore, I will show where the limits are by declaring the artificialities that are my art and by showing them break down or break open at the point where they come closest to touching the truth?"

BERGMAN: That's very interesting, but it's not what I intended. It's very simple: Persona is a creation that saved its creator. Before making it, I was ill, having twice had pneumonia and antibiotic poisoning. I lost my balance for three months. The summer before, I had written a script, but I told everyone it would be cancelled because it was a complicated picture and I didn't feel up to it. I was going to Hamburg then to stage The Magic Flute, and I had to cancel that, too. I remember sitting in my hospital bed, looking directly in front of me at a black spot–because if I turned my head at all, the whole room began to spin. I thought to myself that I would never create anything anymore; I was completely empty, almost dead. The montage at the beginning of the film is just a poem about that personal situation.

SAMUELS: With cuts from earlier Bergman films.

BERGMAN: Because whenever I thought about making a new film, silly pictures from my old ones came into my head. Suddenly, one day I started thinking of two women sitting next to each other and comparing hands. This was a single scene, which, after an enormous effort, I was able to write down. Then, I thought that if I could make a very small picture–perhaps in 16 mm–about two women, one talking, the other not (thus an enormous monologue), it would not be too hard for me. Every day I wrote a little bit. I had as yet no idea about making a regular film, because I was so sick, but I trained myself for it. Each morning at ten I moved from the bed to the writing table, sat down, and sometimes wrote and at other times couldn't. After I left the hospital, I went to the seaside, where I finished the script, although I was still sick. Nevertheless, we decided to go ahead. The producer was very, very understanding. He kept telling me to go on, that we could throw it away if it was bad because it wasn't an expensive project. In the middle of July I started shooting, still so sick that when I stood up I became dizzy. Throughout the first week the results were terrible.

SAMUELS: What did you shoot that week?

BERGMAN: We started with the first scene in the hospital.

SAMUELS: But not with the precredit sequence?

BERGMAN: No, that came afterward. I wanted to give things up, but the producer kept encouraging me, finally telling me to move the company to my island. When we got there, slowly things picked up. The actresses and Sven Nykvist were fantastic; it was a fantastic collaboration. One day we made a scene that we all felt was good. That gave me courage. Then the next day, another scene; then many scenes. It grew, and we began to reshoot what hadn't worked. Exactly what happened and why it happened I don't know.

SAMUELS: Here's a film you make immediately after thinking you'll never make another film again. You come back to life as an artist, step by step, growing in courage until you can face–utterly without fear–the problems, absurdities, and impossibilities of art itself. And you select as a surrogate an artist who suffers what you suffered, except that Elisabeth wills it; she chooses to stop being an artist.

BERGMAN: Yes, because she is not sick.

SAMUELS: Let me get at my point another way. When Elisabeth looks at television and sees a Buddhist monk immolating himself in Vietnam, several critics wanted to take this as an uncharacteristic expression of your interest in politics. But I think it must be related to the later scene–in her bedroom–when she studies the Cartier-Bresson photograph of the Jews being led out of the Warsaw ghetto. Both scenes dramatize the awe inspired in the artist when he faces true suffering–which, however, cannot escape some involvement with art, since both the monk and the Jews reach our consciousness through the art of the photographer.

BERGMAN: Let me explain exactly what I tried to express in the first scene. The monk scares her because his conviction is so enormous he is willing to die for it. The photograph represents real suffering.

SAMUELS: But it is, paradoxically, also art. And I find it suggestive that during the great scene in Shame when you show the people being herded in and out of buildings by the soldiers, you yourself recall the composition of Cartier-Bresson's great photograph. Didn't you feel the recollection?

BERGMAN: In a way, yes. But I never thought of it. The scene you mention represents humiliation, which is the subject of Shame. The film isn't about enormous brutality, but only meanness. It is exactly like what has happened to the Czechs. They defended their rights, and now, slowly, they are being submitted to a tactic of brutalization that wears them down. Shame is not about the bombs; it is about the gradual infiltration of fear.

SAMUELS: So that the low budget and consequent lack of large war scenes precisely reflect your theme.

BERGMAN: Yes, but Shame is not precise enough. My original idea was to show only a single day before the war had broken out. But then I wrote things, and it all went wrong–I don't know why. I haven't seen Shame recently, and I'm a little afraid to do so. When you make such a picture, you have to be very hard on yourself. It's a moral question.

SAMUELS: Why?

BERGMAN: Certain things in life are impossible to represent–like a concentration camp.

SAMUELS: Because the reality is too terrible?

BERGMAN: Exactly. It is almost the same with war as with murder or death. You must be a hundred percent morally conscious in treating these things.

SAMUELS: You must not simply shock.

BERGMAN: Exactly. To see someone dying is false–

SAMUELS: When we know he will get up after the performance.

BERGMAN: In the theatre it's not so bad because we accept all these conventions, but film is different.

SAMUELS: Still, you are more successful in Shame than you acknowledge. For example, I think that the interview scene creates the horror of war without any false killings. Who are these soldiers? What do they want? How dare they televise their brutalization? How dare they humiliate other human beings in this way: Life goes to the end of Western civilization? [Bergman laughs heartily.] Where did you get the idea for this scene?

BERGMAN: I don't know.

SAMUELS: It was in the script? You didn't improvise?

BERGMAN: It was in the script.

SAMUELS: Do you improvise much at other times?

BERGMAN: No. I improvise only when I have a plan. Improvising for itself is impossible.

SAMUELS: Didn't you improvise the interviews with the actors in The Passion of Anna?

BERGMAN: I'm sorry to say that those are very unsuccessful. I just wanted to have a break in the film and to let the actors express themselves. Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann improvised their interviews, but Max von Sydow and Erland Josephson had no idea what to say, so they said what I told them to. This led to two different films, and I no longer understand why I left the whole batch in, because I always realized that they wouldn't work. But I like coups de théâtre, things that make people wake up and rejoin the film. This time, however, it wasn't successful.

SAMUELS: There are no coups in Winter Light; the rhythm is even. I want to ask another question about that film. When von Sydow's drowned body is discovered, why is the shot so distant?

BERGMAN: Because I always feel that something is more terrifying at a distance. Thus, in Shame, when Max shoots Björnstrand, we are far away, and I place the crime behind a wagon.

SAMUELS: But we are close to Elisabeth when she sucks Alma's blood in Persona.

BERGMAN: Because that isn't real.

SAMUELS: It's an expression of their relationship rather than an event?

BERGMAN: Exactly. It's not meant to be terrifying.

SAMUELS: This brings me to a more general area. Do you exercise total control over camera placement and editing?

BERGMAN: Yes. When I shoot, I know almost exactly how long a scene will take because I have a sort of rhythm inside that I try to re-create.

SAMUELS: Do you ever shoot out of sequence, knowing how things will be put together?

BERGMAN: I only do that when contingencies make it necessary. I always try to start at the beginning, shoot forward, and then reshoot later. I always reshoot the first days' work.

SAMUELS: There are several possible explanations for Elisabeth's refusal to speak in Persona. It is an act of great honesty; since she only imitates the real suffering in the world, she decides not to get onstage night after night and mock reality with her stage grief. It is also an act of aggression against other people; her silence renders them helpless.

BERGMAN: It is as the doctor in the films says, "Silence too is a role." Elisabeth lacks a sense of humour. Anyone who works in this profession must keep from taking the theatre too seriously; it is all a game.

SAMUELS: Is that why you call The Magician a comedy?

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: Because it is about the game of being an artist?

BERGMAN: We artists represent the most serious things–life and death–but it is all a game.

SAMUELS: In Persona, why do you repeat the scene when Alma analyzes Elisabeth once with Alma on camera and again with Elisabeth on camera, reacting?

BERGMAN: Because both actresses are wonderful. First, I cut it in reverse shots, but I felt that something was missing. I felt that a whole dimension was added by repeating the scene with the other woman on camera.

SAMUELS: Why does Alma break down and speak nonsense syllables before she leaves the island?

BERGMAN: She has been driven nearly insane by her resentments so that words, which are no longer useful, can no longer be put together by her. But it is not a matter of psychology. Rather, this comes at the point inside the movement of the film itself where words can no longer have any meaning.

SAMUELS: Do you think that Elisabeth deliberately sent Alma off with the letter [in which she discusses how she is using the nurse] in order that the girl may read it?

BERGMAN: I never thought about that. Perhaps.

SAMUELS: Something like that happens often in your films. In Through a Glass Darkly, for example, Karin learns how her father has been studying her when she finds his diary. In The Passion of Anna, Andreas learns about Anna's lie by finding the letter she left in her purse. Etc. Many of your characters leave evidence about themselves for the very person who must not see it.

BERGMAN: Letters and diaries are very tempting. I'm extremely, passionately interested in human beings. Anything written or left behind tempts me so much that I'd read it if I could. When my mother died–four years ago–we discovered a diary that we had not known she was keeping daily since 1916! It was a fantastic act to read it because she wrote in a microscopically small script, with many abbreviations. But suddenly we discovered an unknown woman–intelligent, impatient, furious, rebellious–who had lived under this disciplined perfect housewife.

SAMUELS: I wouldn't dare to discuss your mother, but the characters in your films who leave evidence behind may, in a sense, be lying. After all, you yourself admit that words must arouse suspicion; the self we write about is an artistic construction.

BERGMAN: Words...are...always...difficult. Now we're back to the beginning. The musician writes notes on a score, which are the most perfect signs that exist between creator and performer. But words are a very very bad channel between writer and performer.

SAMUELS: And audience.

BERGMAN: Yes, so I'm always suspicious of words.

SAMUELS: Interesting fact, though: You use music less and less in your films. Why?

BERGMAN: Because I think that film itself is music, and I can't put music in music.

SAMUELS: Why did it take you so long to discover that?

BERGMAN: Because I've been ambivalent.

SAMUELS: In The Touch isn't the buzz saw that we hear when Karin comes to David's apartment and finds him gone your new way to use music?

BERGMAN: I think everything on the sound track must complement the image–voices, noises, music; all are equal. Sometimes I feel very unhappy because I have still not found the solution to the problem of sound.

SAMUELS: Isn't it true, however, that you use commentative sound more frequently now than in your earlier films?

BERGMAN: Yes, it's true.

SAMUELS: Another good example of this new use of the sound track is the fog horn in Persona that signals a movement out of the real world. One last question about that film: When Alma leaves, you hold for a moment on the wooden statue of a woman which we see again in Shame, The Passion of Anna, and The Touch. Why?

BERGMAN: It's the figurehead from a ship. On the island where I live, I have her outside my house. She's a friend of mine, and I like her because she is made of hardwood. She represents something to me, for personal reasons.

SAMUELS: How do you respond to the viewer who has caught such personal references–the reappearing figurehead, all the Voglers and Andreases, the discovered diaries and letters, the personal fear of birds that creates the climax of Hour of the Wolf but must be invoked even to explain small moments (like the bird dashing itself against the window in The Passion of Anna)? What do you say to the person who keeps seeing these things but doesn't understand their significance? Bergman is sending messages, he thinks, but what are they and why?

BERGMAN: Perhaps these things that mean so much to me also mean something to someone else.

SAMUELS: You have no specific intention in repeating them?

BERGMAN: No.

SAMUELS: But do you see what this does to a spectator who follows you as if you were a writer? This problem has been brought on you by your own genius for creating a unique world that others wish to chart. And it's not a playful world either, like Truffaut's, with all his joking references to favourite directors and his playful casting of friends in minor roles. You don't joke in that way; even in your lightest comedy, the spectator never doubts that serious and typical issues are involved. Your admirers want to understand the layout of your world, to know the names and properties and even the importance of all these lakes, islands, rocks. What advice do you give us?

BERGMAN: It's irrelevant. All these things are dreams–not necessarily ones that I have dreamed; rather fantasies. When you are dreaming....Perhaps you remember your dreams?

SAMUELS: Hardly ever.

BERGMAN: But you know that you dream?

SAMUELS: Of course. Otherwise I wouldn't sleep.

BERGMAN: If you didn't dream, you would go mad.

SAMUELS: Yes.

BERGMAN: Every night you enter a world of people, colours, furniture, islands, lakes, landscapes, buildings–everything–that belongs to you alone. But if you remember your dreams and start telling them to other people, then maybe the other people will start to know you better.

SAMUELS: Then it doesn't bother you when critics interpret you through these items?

BERGMAN: Not at all. Not at all. And let me tell you, I learn more from critics who honestly criticize my pictures than from those who are devout.

SAMUELS: Why then, very early in our interview, did you insist, "I don't care what you think"?

BERGMAN: Because I had the feeling that we started with you trying to stress yourself....

SAMUELS: To make myself the subject of the interview?

BERGMAN: No. You were so hidden....I saw you had prepared very well, and you remained locked in your preparation. You knew we had little time; you wanted to start in a hurry. So you began to talk to me in a way that was very hard for me to understand. Then I just said anything to break through. Now I think we are in perfect communication. Perhaps our discussion is a little tumultuous, but I like it that way. Now we sit down as two human beings, discussing things in a simple way. When I was impolite and said, "I don't care what you think," I meant it–because all the people who are important to me....Buñuel once said a wonderful thing: "I make pictures only for my friends." And they influence me. They interfere, and I listen to them, and they help me change things. But, you know, I hate the intellectual way of handling things that are very sensual, very personal to me. Do you understand what I mean? So I just said anything that would cut us down to a level where we could communicate. I myself can't say that Persona is my best picture....Ten times a month people ask me, "Which is your best picture?" but that is irrelevant to me because some of my pictures are closer to my heart than others. When we meet and you say, "This is good, and this is bad," I can't stand it, but if you say, "This is closer to my heart; I feel this; I don't feel that," then I can understand you.

SAMUELS: Then we go on–to the other pictures. Night Is My Future is the first film you directed from someone else's script and novel. When you direct in that way, does it feel different from directing your own script?

BERGMAN: Yes, in a way, but I'm used to it because in the theatre I'm always directing other people's scripts. Of course, I like it more in the theatre because that is my profession. In films, it's more difficult.

SAMUELS: When you make such a film, under conditions that come close to stage directing, are you therefore freed for more experimentation with cinematic devices? For example, the opening scene in Night Is My Future, in which the hero is blinded during target practice, seems more cinematic than most things in your previous films.

BERGMAN: The producer cut that whole sequence to pieces. When I made that picture, I would have accepted an offer to film the telephone book. I was a flop from the beginning. Then a very clever producer came to me and said, "Ingmar, you are a flop. Here's a very sentimental story that will appeal to the public. You need a box-office success now." I replied, "I will lick your ass if you like; only let me make a picture." So I made the picture, and I'm extremely grateful to him–he later let me make Prison. Every day he came to the studio and told me, "No. Reshoot. This is too difficult, incomprehensible. You are crazy! She must be beautiful! You must have more light on her hair! You must have some cats in the film! Perhaps you can find some little dog." The picture was a great success. He taught me–in a very tough way–much that saved me. I will be grateful to him till my dying day.

SAMUELS: He saved you from not communicating directly to the audience?

BERGMAN: Yes. Yes. I was so frightened of the audience that I couldn't communicate.

SAMUELS: Your next film, Three Strange Loves, contains a scene of childbirth. Such a scene recurs often in your films. Why?

BERGMAN: I have nine children!

SAMUELS: I have two, both of them sick now–unfortunately.

BERGMAN: Yes? How?

SAMUELS: A mysterious ailment. It began with my wife, stayed briefly with my elder daughter, and now my youngest has it most violently. Do you know what hives are? Red weltlike marks that appear on the skin. We now think we may know the cause. We've just built a new house, and the doctor thinks–this is weird!–that a chemical reaction has been set off between the vinyl asbestos tile and the concrete basement floor that somehow causes the emission of a thin gas to which they're all allergic.

BERGMAN: That is terrible! Your wife is allergic, too?

SAMUELS: My poor wife is working now for the first time in ten years, and just now she has to cope with the children's illnesses and her own and with getting someone to help out, since I'm not home. Every night the baby wakes up several times, yet my wife must go to work the next morning even though she hasn't slept.

BERGMAN: It's terrible! Terrible!

SAMUELS: In Three Strange Loves–

BERGMAN: It started when you moved into the house?

SAMUELS: No. That would be easy. It started eight months later. Maybe the chemical reaction took that long.

BERGMAN: Have you tried a temporary move?

SAMUELS: When she visited her parents in New York, it didn't improve. It's now systemic.

BERGMAN: It sounds like an allergy that you can be vaccinated against.

SAMUELS: Allergists can't do that unless they're certain of the cause.

BERGMAN: Wouldn't sun and sea help?

SAMUELS: We were in Cape Cod this summer, but it didn't help. We need to see a specialist. Mr. Bergman–

BERGMAN: What torture! This is torture!

SAMUELS: It's the uncertainty, more even than the disease itself. Mr. Bergman, in–

BERGMAN: How did your wife react when the disease began?

SAMUELS: She itched. But the medicine controls that. Mostly, she's upset for the children.

BERGMAN: All of them are suffering now?

SAMUELS: Except for the older child, who only had it two weeks. I didn't get it at all.

BERGMAN: But your wife has it still?

SAMUELS: Yes, but the medicine controls it.

BERGMAN: Does the medicine make her tired?

SAMUELS: No. But if she stops taking it, the hives return.

BERGMAN: What is it called?

SAMUELS: The medicine? Atarax.

BERGMAN: Calcium or–

SAMUELS: I don't really know the chemical composition.

BERGMAN: It's very strange. You know, the relation between a small girl and her mother can be very strange and difficult. If the mother has a pain in the stomach, very often the child will feel the same pain for psychological reasons.

SAMUELS: I don't believe in doctors, but–

BERGMAN: Nor I.

SAMUELS: But they say it's physical and, in this case, I think they're right.

BERGMAN: The medicine doesn't help your daughter?

SAMUELS: Only a little.

BERGMAN: She itches?

SAMUELS: Yes. And she comes to sleep with us in the middle of the night because she's wakened by it.

BERGMAN: Terrible!

SAMUELS: And she's such a good little girl that she feels guilty for spoiling our sleep.

BERGMAN: Very difficult! It is–

SAMUELS: Mr. Bergman, why did you make personal appearances in Three Strange Loves and in Secrets of Women?

BERGMAN: Lack of extras! [Laughter.]

SAMUELS: You were saving money?

BERGMAN: Yes. [Laughter.]

SAMUELS: Why did you decide at this particular point in your career to make so stylized a comedy as Smiles of a Summer Night?

BERGMAN: I thought it was time for a box-office success, and although everyone disagreed with me, I was convinced that this picture would succeed. Moreover, I have always liked the pièce bien fait (Marivaux and Scribe) with its strategical plot construction. In a way, this film is just a play that I desired to write. I hadn't the money to produce it, so I got someone to let me make it into a film.

SAMUELS: In fact, some people have criticized your films for being too theatrical–particularly the early ones. How do you answer this charge?

BERGMAN: I am a director.

SAMUELS: But aren't the two forms different?

BERGMAN: Completely. In my earlier pictures, it was very difficult for me to go from directing in the theatre to directing films. I didn't succeed in making the change. But this is not important.

SAMUELS: Apropos, is that why you use a narrator in your first film, Crisis, and a sort of stage manager who addresses the audience and asks us to use our imaginations–unnecessarily, since cinema shows all it wants to–in your second film, It Rains on Our Love?

BERGMAN: Yes. Until Summer Interlude....I don't know how many pictures I had made before it–

SAMUELS: Nine.

BERGMAN: Nine. Well, I had always felt technically crippled–insecure with the crew, the cameras, the sound equipment–everything. Sometimes a film succeeded, but I never got what I wanted to get. But in Summer Interlude, I suddenly felt that I knew my profession.

SAMUELS: Do you have any idea why?

BERGMAN: I don't know, but for heaven's sake, a day must always come along when finally one succeeds in understanding his profession! I'm so impressed by young directors now who know how to make a film from the first moment.

SAMUELS: But they have nothing to say. [Bergman laughs.] Still, I'm very interested in why–and I agree that it is–Summer Interlude is a turning point. Might the breakthrough, which you perceive as technical, be related to content? Because this seems to me your first film to achieve true complexity. At the end of To Joy the conductor tells the hero, who has just suffered the loss of a beloved wife, that he should find consolation in music, and we close on the strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Summer Interlude has a similar conclusion, but it is far more complicated and ambiguous. The heroine dances off to her new lover, having put the past idyll behind her, but we perceive this as an accommodation rather than a solution. Grief is not facilely transcended.

BERGMAN: Your question is difficult. I will try to....I don't understand. You are puzzled when the conductor tells the hero to play?

SAMUELS: No. I'm saying that the conclusions of these two films are similar but–

BERGMAN: And of Winter Light.

SAMUELS: Yes–but Summer Interlude is the first excellent example of this theme, because for the first time you don't seem to feel the need of a simple conclusion. And I think this is crucial to your success. For example, even Smiles of a Summer Night, which you call a pièce bien fait, is distinguished not by neatness, but by ambiguity. The plot is resolved, but not the problems of the characters. Moreover, though a comedy about love, the film is also a drama about death: Before the lovers flee, you show a medieval clock striking the hour through a parade of wooden figures (recalling the end of The Seventh Seal), in which the most prominent is death.

BERGMAN: That whole film is about destruction. Smiles of a Summer Night is much darker than it appears. I made it during one of my most depressing periods, when I myself was near death. Like Persona, it saved its creator. Often one makes a tragedy in a good mood and, when in a bad mood, turns to comedy. It is also true, as you say, that in Summer Interlude I start to accept life as a compromise. Before you do that, life is difficult and heavy, and things go wrong; at the moment you accept your limits and see them clearly, you have a greater desire to create and more joy in creation.

SAMUELS: But how could you, in that state, make a film like A Lesson in Love?

BERGMAN: Oh, that's just a divertissement. I had just finished The Naked Night and was living with Harriet Andersson at a small seaside hotel. She liked to sunbathe on the beach, and I liked to sit down–

SAMUELS: In the shade?

BERGMAN: No. It was a fantastic hotel, exactly like the one in Mr. Hulot's Holiday. There was a small tower in it where I used to sit and read. I had just divorced my third wife, though I still liked her very much, and, therefore, began writing about her. In fourteen days I finished the script, and fourteen days later we began shooting the picture. The whole thing was just for fun–and money. I was very poor at that time, you know. I already had lots of children and a lot of women, and money had to be paid out. A good deal of my filmmaking in earlier years came from lack of money.

SAMUELS: "Women and children are hostages to fortune."

BERGMAN: [Laughs uproariously.]

SAMUELS: Were any of the scenes in A Lesson in Love that portray the couple before they're married made in imitation of American "screwball comedy"?

BERGMAN: No, but I had seen them all, so perhaps unconsciously....You know, I have never been scared of being influenced. I like to use others' styles. I don't want to be unique. I am a cinemagoer. I have no complexes on this subject.

SAMUELS: Is that because you're sure that you'll always be yourself?

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: Particularly in the scene where Eva Dahlbeck beats up her former lover, I was reminded of a Rosalind Russell picture.

BERGMAN: That scene was a one-act play I had written long before and just put in there because it was funny. I wrote it in imitation of the one-act comedies by Chekhov.

SAMUELS: Back to Smiles of a Summer Night. Normally, you show that the woman is wiser than the man in successful heterosexual love, almost like a mother to him. Yet in this film you seem to be arguing that men and women should marry people their own age. Hadn't you previously suggested, in effect, that all women are older than men? Why the new issue of compatibility in ages?

BERGMAN: Perhaps you are right.

SAMUELS: That's one of the reasons I don't feel too optimistic about the lovers' future; hence, I am not too happy at the conclusion. She is far too young and innocent for him. Am I right?

BERGMAN: Yes, I think so.

SAMUELS: This film is paradoxical, so much more complicated than it seems.

BERGMAN: You know, a French critic compared it to Rules of the Game, so I wanted to see the film. When an American producer, who wanted to make me a present, asked me to choose one, I requested a print of Renoir's film to put in my private cinémathèque. I think it's an extremely bad picture. It is badly acted. Renoir is a very overrated director. He has only made one good picture: The Human Beast.

SAMUELS: You liked that?

BERGMAN: Wasn't it good?

SAMUELS: It's awful!

BERGMAN: It's awful? I saw it when I was twenty, and it made an enormous impression on me. It's not good?

SAMUELS: No. No. I happen to like The Rules of the Game very much, but I think I can guess why you don't. Most of the film was improvised, and there is a tremendous effect of casualness.

BERGMAN: It is irritating. It lacks style. I can't understand its humour, its complete lack of sensuality. The hunt is good, though.

SAMUELS: Stupendous. The greatest thing in the film is when the hunters beat the trees to flush the rabbits out. There is real brutality! But back to your film: The more often I see Smiles of a Summer Night, the angrier I become at Egerman. His wife is dying for him to possess her, yet he is prevented by his own stupid ideas about the possible ways of living with love. Egerman's folly casts his wife into the arms of his son.

BERGMAN: He is stupid. He is immature. He misunderstands his affair with the actress. He is a fool.

SAMUELS: If you could have shot this in colour, would you have?

BERGMAN: No. Because it is more fascinating to shoot in black and white and force people to imagine the colours.

SAMUELS: Why have you switched to colour recently?

BERGMAN: At the beginning, it was painful, but now I like it. It's more sensual–now that we've learned to use it.

SAMUELS: The Passion of Anna is gorgeous, but–my God!–All These Women looks like a bad MGM musical.

BERGMAN: We started by reading all the books, and we tried to do the right things, but it is–

SAMUELS: Tutti-frutti.

BERGMAN: Yes. Yes. [Laughter.] In The Passion of Anna we decided to use no blue at all–

SAMUELS: Yet one feels so cold: gray, but not blue.

BERGMAN: Exactly.

SAMUELS: Do you work in colour now–to any degree–because you feel that the audience demands it?

BERGMAN: No. I like it.

SAMUELS: Why, at the beginning of The Passion of Anna, do you show Liv Ullmann using a crutch?

BERGMAN: All the time I was writing the part I knew Liv Ullmann must play it, and I knew that the crutch would have a powerful effect on Liv Ullmann's feelings.

SAMUELS: Doesn't it also symbolize the way in which Anna uses her "happy marriage" as a crutch?

BERGMAN: Of course. But that is a second reason.

SAMUELS: Why did you make Anna dream a dream from Shame?

BERGMAN: Things sometimes happen for strange reasons. When we made Shame, we built that house on the island and landscaped the grounds–all with government permission because, since the island is a sort of animal preserve, you aren't allowed to build houses there without a permit. When the film was finished, the producer told me that we had to tear the house down, and I begged him not to. I told him I would make another picture there even though I had no idea of making one; I just didn't want to lose that house. Inside, I had a strange feeling that I had not succeeded in Shame, and I wanted to recreate the film in the place where it had failed. You know, the atmosphere in The Passion of Anna is exactly like that of Shame: killing, brutality, anonymity, people's sense of their utter helplessness before brutality. Liv Ullmann plays the same role in both films, and the woman in Shame might have dreamed the same dreams that Anna dreams. Originally, I indicated the intimate link between the two films through the dialogue, but I eventually cut it out. When Bibi Andersson first comes to Max von Sydow, I had him say, "Two people who disappeared in the war used to live in this house."

SAMUELS: Why do you make Max von Sydow an archaeologist and then link that not to a former but to a subsequent film? In The Touch, Elliott Gould is also an archaeologist.

BERGMAN: I have always been fascinated by digging and looking for things.

SAMUELS: You also dig–for the truth about people–

BERGMAN: Some sort of truth.

SAMUELS: All right: a truth.

BERGMAN: No! No! No! No! Excuse me. I dig for secret expressions and relations that we hide–

SAMUELS: Behind our faces. Thus you put the camera right up close to see if you can get through the face. But you also seem to me to be aware that the hidden truth revealed by means of an actress' face is also a lie because it is art.

BERGMAN: Please don't talk about the truth; it doesn't exist! Behind each face there is another and another and another. The actress' face gives you, in enormous concentration, that whole series of faces–not at a single moment, but at different moments in the performance or, sometimes, during a long close-up. In each thousandth part of a second an actor gives you a different impression, but the succession is so rapid that you take them all as a single truth.

SAMUELS: That's the way film itself works: a succession of individual frames perceived by the eye as one moving image.

BERGMAN: The two things are almost the same; you are right.

SAMUELS: And in both cases, you pick the ones you want from all the separate expressions and thus make a single truth. So, finally, we get not the truth revealed through the actress' face but your selection of all the instances of it that she has expressed to you.

BERGMAN: Everything you do in pictures is selection. People who now go out and shoot everything are perverting cinematographic art.

SAMUELS: You select from the things you've caught with the camera, but you also impose by providing dialogue.

BERGMAN: That's because I place my people in stylized surroundings and situations where they can express things that are complex and secret–and emotionally stimulating to the audience. Every second in my pictures is made to move the audience.

SAMUELS: Do you decide exactly how we are to be moved, what we are to feel?

BERGMAN: No. No. Only that you feel something.

SAMUELS: Why do you use so much dialogue in your films?

BERGMAN: Because human communication occurs through words. I tried once, to eliminate language, in The Silence, and I feel that that picture is excessive.

SAMUELS: It's too abstract.

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: I want to move to The Silence, but one last question about The Passion of Anna. What is the meaning of the last line: "This time his name was Andreas."

BERGMAN: [Laughter.] We will be back.

SAMUELS: I don't understand. It can mean that she's a man-eater, because her first husband was also named Andreas, or it can mean that another human being has been destroyed in the world, "This time his name is Andreas," or that another Bergman character has been destroyed, this time named Andreas.

BERGMAN: I will tell you; it's much simpler. It means a sort of giving up: "This time his name is Andreas." You must feel behind the meaning another that you cannot define. For me, it expresses a feeling of boredom.

SAMUELS: I don't understand.

BERGMAN: I mean, "This time his name is Andreas"; but I will be back, and next time my character will have another name. I don't know what it will be, but this boring character will be back.

SAMUELS: Also you?

BERGMAN: Yes. [Hearty laughter.]

SAMUELS: You know, I think The Silence proves my point. Look, I'm not going to try to defend myself anymore, but you should understand that I do disapprove of the totally intellectual response to film–

BERGMAN: You know, one of my best friends, who lives a completely intellectual life, is emotionally crippled. He's very tight, but I like him extremely because he's so unhappy and nice and, inside, warm. He's his own enemy all the time. Everything I dislike he likes; and everything he likes I dislike. Yet I find it so fascinating to study his reactions, which are always enormously intelligent. His second or third reaction may be emotional, but even that is controlled.

SAMUELS: I never have only an intellectual reaction.

BERGMAN: Yes, now that we have spoken awhile, I see that you are extremely emotional.

SAMUELS: But I must talk to you intellectually because we are discussing your art....Nevertheless, what displeases me about The Silence is the exclusiveness of its appeal to our intellects. It gets whiter and whiter as it goes on, bleaching out until I can't see anything. This fits the theme, but it also starves me. I don't hate The Silence, as, for example, I hate a film like Crisis, which is of no interest whatever, but I hate it. All it leaves me with are questions: For example, why does the boy look at the picture of the nymph and satyr?

BERGMAN: This film is very....What shall I say about The Silence? I think it is about the complete breakdown of illusions....It's very difficult to tell you....It's about my private life....It's an extremely personal picture.

SAMUELS: Which is why it doesn't communicate.

BERGMAN: I think that's true. It is a sort of personal purgation: a rendering of hell on earth–my hell. The picture is so....It is so strange to me that I do not know what it means. I saw it some weeks ago, so it is rather clear in my mind now. Some of the scenes I liked so much that I was astonished.

SAMUELS: Such as?

BERGMAN: One of the best scenes I have ever made is the short meeting between the waiter and Alma in the darkness while the radio is playing Bach. He comes in, pronounces the name Johann Sebastian Bach, and she says, "The music is beautiful." It is a sudden moment of communication–so clean.

SAMUELS: Also clear.

BERGMAN: Completely clear. This picture has too many personal references to me and to my life and experiences so that today–ten years later–it seems as if it were made by someone else. But that scene does not.

SAMUELS: There are two paradoxes about the autobiographical nature of the film. One is the odd excess of impersonal, even routinized symbolism, largely Freudian. For example, when the waiter bites off the head of the hot dog, certain members of the audience can't resist pointing to the castration symbol.

BERGMAN: It isn't. The actor I used for the part was a wonderful old man who was sick at the time–owing to a thrombosis, he had lost his memory and couldn't even recall his lines. He even forgot things that were taking place in his life while we were making the film. He had become completely childlike. But his face was so wonderful. So I told him to do whatever he wanted to do, to invent his own business. That was improvised by him to be playful with the boy.

SAMUELS: All right, but the film is full of perverse sexuality: the dwarfs dressing the boy in girl's clothes, the masturbation, the loveless sex, etc.

BERGMAN: This is hell–perversion of sex. When sex is completely totally isolated from other parts of life and all the emotions, it produces an enormous loneliness. That is what the film is about: the degradation of sex.

SAMUELS: And war.

BERGMAN: Yes, because brutality and cruelty are waiting outside.

SAMUELS: Ready to break through in Shame.

BERGMAN: In 1946, I spent a few weeks in Hamburg, and in Paris and Grenoble, in 1949; all, places where the war had been intense. The hotel in The Silence is exactly like ones I lived in. The film has to do with so many things that frighten me–

SAMUELS: What about the scene where the boy urinates against the hotel corridor wall?

BERGMAN: He is purging his troubles, his stress. Now he feels a little more courageous.

SAMUELS: By being naughty, he asserts himself.

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: Let me move to another kind of difficult film, The Magician. Every time I see it I feel differently toward it. Sometimes I love it; other times I hate it.

BERGMAN: Can't you make up your mind and love the picture? Because it was made with so much vitality and pleasure. You know, I was in a very good mood when I made that film.

SAMUELS: That's not the way it appears.

BERGMAN: I'm sorry. We felt the whole time that we were playing a game.

SAMUELS: Here, I think I am speaking for other people. After we've seen The Magician, we can't understand why it is called a comedy. At the end of the film, we look at each other and say–

BERGMAN: "What sort of comedy is this?" A black comedy.

SAMUELS: That won't do. At least, the moments that are meant to play humorously against the others aren't funny. For example, the whole subplot involving the servants–

BERGMAN: That was more developed in the original; for reasons I prefer you not to report, I had to cut most of those scenes. You are right that this part of the film is very unsuccessful.

SAMUELS: The Magician seems both to attack and to exploit theatricalism. As a result, I don't know quite how to feel about your apparent surrogate, Vogler. Or is this doubt what I'm supposed to feel?

BERGMAN: Yes. I don't want you to know how to feel.

SAMUELS: Even more troublesome is the magician's conception of himself as a priest.

BERGMAN: He used to think of himself as a priest. Once he was idealistic; now he simply does the tricks, without any feeling. The only completely integrated man in the film is Vergerus. He's the one I like, not the magician.

SAMUELS: Why, then, do you make him a fool?

BERGMAN: Because he is a fool.

SAMUELS: Then why do you like him?

BERGMAN: I like his dream of finding out the truth about magic.

SAMUELS: You like his innocent scientism?

BERGMAN: And his passion.

SAMUELS: But he's an intellectual, a rationalist.

BERGMAN: Yes, but....

SAMUELS: And you don't like intellectuals.

BERGMAN: No. I do, I do. I do very much...and–

SAMUELS: What differentiates the intellectuals you like from those you don't?

BERGMAN: A good intellectual, in my opinion, is one who has trouble with his emotions. He must doubt his intellect, have fantasies, and be powerfully emotional.

SAMUELS: Tell me, are you hostile to people who seem completely sure of themselves?

BERGMAN: I am very suspicious of them. But, you know, I meet many fishermen and farmers on the island, who are completely free because their lives are so tough and close to them that they are extremely verbal. They are often crazy, but they are sure of themselves because they know their profession. And I always only work with actors who are–in a special way–self-possessed.

SAMUELS: But your characters are never like that.

BERGMAN: Not very often.

SAMUELS: Why?

BERGMAN: Because...it's very difficult to say in English...I think one day perhaps...I think that in my new film, Whispers and Cries, I have created one character who is self-possessed, but she's not intellectual.

SAMUELS: But why do you generally not create such characters, though you say you like them in real life?

BERGMAN: To create such a human being, you must be extremely powerful as a writer. I am not yet so powerful because I have so many things that are....

SAMUELS: Would you like to create someone like Portia in The Merchant of Venice?

BERGMAN: Someone like a Solzhenitsyn character.

SAMUELS: Let me ask you about The Touch now. I am not someone who hated or loved it; I had mixed feelings. I loved the true perceptions about people in the first part of the film, and Karin, by the way, comes very close to being a self-possessed character. In fact, one of the film's points is the limitation of her sort of strength, which David lessens. Do you want us to like him?

BERGMAN: David is...it's very difficult to answer that question.

SAMUELS: Why should I care about him?

BERGMAN: David and the husband both were created as parts of Karin's life, but then the actress wanted to make the story truer to her heart–wanted more light shed on characters who were made to remain in the shadows. Critics have been very unfair to Elliott Gould. He's excellent; he makes much more of the part than there is in it. The guilt for the film's failure is mine. Nevertheless, I think the critical reaction was ridiculous because this film was not made for anything else than to....No. That's not true. I can't understand the critics' aggressiveness.

SAMUELS: I don't know about the others. For me, the problem is this: Throughout the film, you show that David is doing Karin some good. Church bells often ring when they meet. You include the obtrusive symbol of the madonna, which is being devoured by termites; David tells Karin that the termites are as beautiful as the madonna they destroy–

BERGMAN: It is very simple. In the beginning of the picture, when it is still romantic, there is a lot of music and beauty. From the middle of the picture, all music, bells, and so forth cease. When he returns to her after his absence, everything has changed. His beard is off; everything is naked, hard, real.

SAMUELS: But aren't we meant to feel that even the bad things in their affair have made her a better person?

BERGMAN: That's because David has brought her suffering and change. She has resources and talents that he brings out.

SAMUELS: Must one always suffer to develop? Isn't it possible to watch the film and say that she was just as talented before he showed up? One of the loveliest scenes occurs when she is looking at herself in the mirror. Her husband comes to embrace her, and then, without a word from him, she walks into the bedroom and prepares herself for what is obviously their favourite sexual position. This seems to be poise, richness, understanding.

BERGMAN: That's true. That's true.

SAMUELS: I think there's nothing that David does for her that is equally important.

BERGMAN: Exactly. But you must remember that in the church she tells him that she could live with both men and make a meaningful and proper life. She is much more alive than anyone else. She knows she has enough warmth and human resources to make both men happy and create a new sort of life. She has a richness which he has made her understand.

SAMUELS: Why, then, in the scene when she goes to his apartment and discovers he's left does she press her hand on the broken glass?

BERGMAN: There you have an exact example of the difficulty between actress and director. I invented that, but Bibi Andersson could not perform it. An actress can do something unsuited to her and make it believable, but Bibi Andersson is so integrated a person that, for her, it is impossible to play something she doesn't believe in.

SAMUELS: As the author, what did you intend as Karin's motive when she wounds her hand?

BERGMAN: The pain in her soul is so extreme that she wants to localize it in her body.

SAMUELS: But it looks different. She enters the room and is dismayed by his absence, yet in the midst of her anguish, she shows signs of exhaustion: She yawns. So, to restore her involvement with the pain, she inflicts a wound on herself.

BERGMAN: But that is Bibi Andersson.

SAMUELS: For whatever reason, the scene suggests that David had always appealed to her as a way of quickening her feeling because he brought her pain.

BERGMAN: The whole scene is wrong.

SAMUELS: It is like a note struck in a piece of music that brings the wrong overtone to the following notes.

BERGMAN: I quite agree. I'm not very happy about it. It can't be cut out, but it is seductive and wrong. You always have the script, your intention, and the actress. All the time, a fight goes on among these things. It is very fascinating, this struggle. Often it makes things come alive. An example is Persona.

SAMUELS: But Persona is not realistic so it can absorb what in The Touch becomes a destructive falsity.

BERGMAN: You are exactly right.

SAMUELS: This brings me to The Seventh Seal, which I also find unbalanced between realism and expressionism. Before I begin, are you willing to offer your opinion about The Seventh Seal?

BERGMAN: The Seventh Seal was made in thirty-five days. Most of it was shot in the woods right outside the studio. Everything in it was done in an enormous hurry, and I like it because it expresses a sort of craftsmanship. It's very theatrical and complicated. Some parts of the picture I still like. It is very close to me. When we were making it, each morning brought a new catastrophe because we had to make it cheap and quick. For the beach scenes, we had only three days on location! The actors carried the cameras. We borrowed costumes from the theatre. It was all done in a hurry, but with enormous enthusiasm. We were happy even to be able to produce some images each day. For example, the scene with the flagellants was shot from eight A.M.. to seven P.M. of a single day.

SAMUELS: Are you satisfied with that scene?

BERGMAN: I like it, but of course, I had no time to reshoot anything or even to produce enough shots for the sequence.

SAMUELS: It does seem to be awfully stagy.

BERGMAN: Of course it is.

SAMUELS: You wanted that? These religious people are also putting on a show?

BERGMAN: That was not my intention. I only wanted it done quickly.

SAMUELS: Was the script written quickly, too?

BERGMAN: No. It started as a small one-act play. This picture is enormously theatrical, but I don't care. It was such a fantastic time. We never slept. We only rehearsed and shot. When Raval is dying in the forest, he asks for water, for pity, and he cries, "I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying." When we shot that moment, suddenly the sun came out!

SAMUELS: A miracle.

BERGMAN: [Laughter.] A miracle.

SAMUELS: You had fun making it, but it's troubling for the spectator. For example, why does all-powerful death have to resort to such low trickery?

BERGMAN: The whole film is based on medieval pictures in a Swedish church. If you go there, you will see death playing chess, sawing a tree, making jokes with human souls. It's like a Mexican peasant game that takes death as a joke. Only suddenly does he become terrible.

SAMUELS: Let me get at the problem another way. It does seem that the sensibility of the medieval artist is totally different from the sensibility behind this film.

BERGMAN: That's not true. Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death–this infantile fixation of mine–was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry–with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, "Here is a painting; take it, please."

SAMUELS: And internationally, people did.

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: So you were vindicated.

BERGMAN: Thirty-five days!

SAMUELS: Time is running out. Where shall I go? Let me turn to that magnificent early film, The Naked Night. Were you consciously imitating Strindberg in that film?

BERGMAN: Strindberg? I must tell you that I am a specialist on Strindberg, and I don't find anything Strmdbergian in that film. People who don't know Strindberg so well....We do. We have a great Strindberg tradition in this theatre; I have produced many of his plays; I have devoted my professional life as a stage director to Strindberg; my version of The Dream Play is in its third year, and this is the second time I have staged it. I have staged several of his plays three times each. To me, there is no sign–

SAMUELS: Let me point to one moment that–

BERGMAN: No. The picture has something to do with Emil Jannings' Variety [a German film directed by E.A. Dupont in 1925].

SAMUELS: Why?

BERGMAN: Because it was the first picture I acquired as a collector. It fascinated me so much that I consciously imitated it.

SAMUELS: The Naked Night marks the start of your collaboration with Sven Nykvist.

BERGMAN: Yes, but he was only one of four cameramen working on that film. It was made in the mess of that circus at a studio which was doing five other films while I was shooting mine. Sometimes other pictures were in my playing area; other times, I was in theirs.

SAMUELS: How much of an effect has Nykvist had on your films?

BERGMAN: Little at that time. It started with Winter Light, when we began together to examine light. From early morning until late evening, we stayed in that church registering every gradation of the light. Our common passion–and I feel this even on the stage–is to create light: light and faces surrounded by shadows. This is what fascinates me!

SAMUELS: Yet The Naked Night already shows one of your greatest triumphs in lighting: during the scene when the clown is humiliated by his wife's bathing before the soldiers. How was that effect obtained?

BERGMAN: That was not Nykvist; it was another cameraman.

SAMUELS: Was it done with overexposure?

BERGMAN: They thought I was crazy. We made a negative of the print, and then from that negative we made a new print and then a new negative. Eventually we effaced every grain of the image until we got true black and white–and only black and white.

SAMUELS: There is a related moment in the film that I feel is Strindbergian because–

BERGMAN: I never thought of it, but perhaps it is Strindbergian unconsciously. If you live in a Strindberg tradition, you are breathing Strindberg air. After all, I have been seeing Strindberg at the theatre since I was ten years old, so it is difficult to say what belongs to him and what to me.

SAMUELS: One of my favourite lines from The Ghost Sonata, which is my favourite Strindberg play–

BERGMAN: Mine, too.

SAMUELS: –is the young girl's about "the drudgery of keeping oneself above the dirt of life." This I don't see in your films: the dirt, the mere physical act of going on, of tending to things etc.

BERGMAN: [Very very softly.] That's true.

SAMUELS: Why? Why, where there is so much life, is the simple dirt absent? Even in The Touch, where it could have been, we don't see it.

BERGMAN: You're right....I select....First of all, I don't know very much about the dirt of life. I have always rejected it...and it's not....I have lived under very bad conditions in my life. I have been very hungry and very sick and sometimes very dirty. With four wives and nine children, you can imagine! But in my pictures I always select, and I find–if you mean real dirt–that it is uninteresting to me. My mind has never been infected by it.

SAMUELS: One film of yours has dirt, and I love this film: Monika.

BERGMAN: Yes.

SAMUELS: It's very good.

BERGMAN: Very good!

SAMUELS: Very underrated. It has several superb things: the sequence in which they leave Stockholm, the opening shot of Harriet Andersson that also closes the film. How did you get that? She's listening to a phonograph record, smoking a cigarette, and looking directly into the camera.

BERGMAN: It just happened.

SAMUELS: And then you decided to use it at the beginning and end?

BERGMAN: It isn't in the beginning.

SAMUELS: In America, it appears under the credits.

BERGMAN: That is a mistake. At that time, they made a mess of my pictures outside Sweden. I intended that shot only to appear toward the end. When I made it, everyone said I was crazy; suddenly she looks directly at us!

SAMUELS: Why did you use something like this again in Hour of the Wolf?

BERGMAN: Because television has made it less difficult to accept. Therefore, I have Liv Ullmann tell the story directly to us.

SAMUELS: Why do you end the film in mid-sentence?

BERGMAN: Because the whole picture is half-spoken sentences. It is...an unsuccessful attempt–

SAMUELS: Of hers?

BERGMAN: Of mine, too.

SAMUELS: Another personal film.

BERGMAN: Too personal.

SAMUELS: Indeed, I can't understand what's going on.

BERGMAN: [Laughter.] Me, too. It's very strange to me.

SAMUELS: What does the scene with the boy mean? What are the demons doing to the husband? Why does the wife also see them? I have questions and questions.

BERGMAN: Me, too. To me, however, the picture is extremely real. The demons and the boy....Do you know French? In French, it is called folie à deux. The wife is also ill.

SAMUELS: But we see her as a kind of earth mother, next to a bowl of apples, and–

BERGMAN: Yes, that's true. But she is also ill.

SAMUELS: You should tell us that earlier in the film.

BERGMAN: No. I wouldn't like that. We discussed it, and I decided not to. But she is infected by him. She is really an earth mother, but she becomes infected and will never return to her former self.

SAMUELS: But she misinterprets her illness. She doesn't realize that she's infected; she thinks the problem was that she was too weak to help her husband.

BERGMAN: The difficulty with the picture is that I couldn't make up my mind who it was about. Had I made it from her point of view it would have been very interesting. But, no, I made it the wrong way. After it was finished, I tried to turn it over to her; we even reshot some scenes, but it was too late. To see a man who is already mad become crazier is boring. What would have been interesting would have been to see an absolutely sane woman go crazy because she loves the madman she married. She enters his world of unreality, and that infects her. Suddenly, she finds out that she is lost. I understood this only when the picture was finished.

SAMUELS: Do you ever make a film to correct another film?

BERGMAN: Only with The Passion of Anna–

SAMUELS: Which corrects Shame.

BERGMAN: Yes. And, a little bit, Winter Light was made to correct Through a Glass Darkly.

SAMUELS: Yes, and one of the problems–

BERGMAN: And The Magician corrects The Naked Night.

SAMUELS: In–

BERGMAN: But not consciously. For heaven's sake, it wasn't conscious.

SAMUELS: You felt it was wrong and–

BERGMAN: Now I have to go.

SAMUELS: So we end in midsentence?

[Much laughter.]