Not long ago the executive vice president in charge of production for one of Hollywood's major studios made a trip to Sweden for the express purpose of interesting Ingmar Bergman in directing a motion picture for his studio. After discussing Picasso at great length, perhaps with the notion of impressing the Swedish director with his broad cultural background, the executive made his offer. Bergman would be given a handsome budget, and there would of course be the magnificent studio facilities (by Swedish standards) to be taken advantage of. And, said the executive emphatically, he would be given complete artistic freedom. "Would the picture be shown exactly as I cut it?" Bergman asked.

It was at this point that the executive hedged. It was a long-standing tradition in Hollywood that the studio made the determination on what represented a final print, not to mention the fact that certain union rules prevented granting such a privilege. Bergman explained that in Sweden he made the final cut on all his pictures, in addition to which he found it very comfortable to work in his own country. Why, then, should he leave? The executive mentioned money, upon which Bergman proceeded to out-Shaw G.B.S. by implying he was more interested in art.

This story was told to me, with certain variations, by several Svensk Filmindustri people during a recent visit I made to Sweden. They took obvious pride in the fact that their bright directorial star, Bergman, preferred to work at home, and had so far successfully resisted the blandishments of producers in several other countries. "The mountains of scripts that come in all year long," said Bergman's assistant, a former dancer and dance director. "He couldn't possibly find time to read them. Besides, he has far too many ideas of his own."

The Swedish film industry is small, but it has suffered the familiar television anguish in recent years. Sets per capita are almost as numerous as in England, but audiences have dropped 40 per cent during the past five years. High taxes make a further inroad on film revenues, and were it not for Ingmar Bergman's spectacular success abroad, Svensk Filmindustri, the largest of four Swedish producing firms, might be sorely beset indeed. Bergman's loyalty is thus highly appreciated. And, at the same time, Bergman owes much to Svensk Filmindustri, particularly to the late Dr. Carl Anders Dymling, who, until his death last year, was the head of the company.

Back in the early 1940s Dr. Dymling attempted to reverse the artistic decline of Swedish film-making by actively encouraging younger talents. Arne Sucksdorff was encouraged to pursue his documentary bent; Alf Sjöberg was given the opportunity to make films like Torment and Miss Julie; and a young theatre director and writer, Ingmar Bergman, was made Sjöberg's apprentice. It should be mentioned, too, that the famous actor and director of an earlier period, Victor Sjöström, served at the time in an advisory capacity for the company. It can be seen, then, that Bergman emerged from well-fertilized ground. And he was carefully nurtured by Dymling through several temperamental storms, as well as through domestic difficulties that resulted in four marriages. (His latest, to an Estonian concert pianist, is said to be idyllic.)

Birger Juberg, the present head of the company, stressed to me Bergman's position now as the acknowledged creative fount of Swedish film-making. "But our great ambition," he said, "is to be more than a one-man industry. In this regard, no one is helping more than Bergman himself." He went on to reveal that many of Bergman's fifteen daily working hours are spent in helping other film writers and directors. Bergman admitted this new side of his multifarious activities when I saw him. "I find it gratifying," he said, "when young people want to come to me and call on what experience I have had. Sometimes I hope they will obey what I tell them, and sometimes I hope not. The important thing is to take care of our Swedish film tradition and try to prolong it."

Kenne Fant, a thirty-nine-year-old producer and director, scheduled to head Svensk Filmindustri production in 1963, was less cautious in assessing the kind of help Bergman was giving others. "He has a knack for immediately finding solutions," he said. "He can sit down with a writer, and within an hour of discussion reveal the basic skeleton of his story, suggest which characters should dominate, and transform an essentially literary or theatrical idea into one suitable for film."

The theatrical tradition is strong in Sweden, and for a long, dry period it dominated film making, too, with a consequent sterility in the form. Bergman had to find his own way from theatricalism to a purer and more and more simplified film style, to give, as one Swedish film authority puts it, "visible form to the inner conflicts of human beings in a genuine cinematic language." That this is his direction is made clear by Through a Glass Darkly, which had its premiere while I was in Stockholm. The local reviews were rapturous, as they deserved to be. Confining himself to four actors in a simple island setting, he has achieved more emotional force than with any of his previous efforts. A sensitive young woman's breakdown into schizophrenia, the effect of the illness on her husband, brother, and father–this proves material enough for a strong motion picture experience. The clarity of realization of both substance and form shows Bergman to be at his peak.

Bergman's workshop is Filmstaden, a studio near Stockholm that is somewhat small by Hollywood standards, but pleasantly modern and well-equipped. It has three large and three smaller sound-stages, and its various facilities are centralized within a complex of red brick buildings. Film unions in Sweden are not as restrictive as here, and this results in small but efficient crews. A Bergman film seldom requires more than a total work force of eighteen, exclusive of actors. A top star in a Swedish film might earn as much as $5,000 per picture. No wonder, then, that Bergman's budgets are kept within a $150,000 to $200,000 range. He almost never takes more than thirty-five days of shooting time, although an exception is being made for The Communicants, another film that will carry on the direct, personal style he now adheres to. Only two hours of daylight will be available for each day of the location filming in central Sweden.

Bergman is practical enough to gear himself to sums that can be reasonably expected to be returned by the Scandinavian market. "My films are made," he said, "in such a way that they will insure our getting the money back in this area." Insurance, security–these seem to be important words for him; they help give him the confidence he needs to continue in his own way.

If Bergman's actors are not paid according to Hollywood standards, they do get from him a very special kind of consideration. He likes actors and sympathizes with their problems. "He regards them," said Kenne Fant, "not only as his family while making the film with them, but as instruments through which emotions and ideas are conveyed." It may be of interest to know that actors like Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, and Harriet Andersson don't consider themselves part of the "stock company" often referred to outside of Sweden. Accomplished on stage as well as in film, they move easily from one medium to the other. "Those of us who work with him often," said von Sydow with a smile, "consider ourselves his staff."

Work on the set halts every day at three, when Bergman gathers his principal actors together and sits down with them for tea. It is an intimate moment for director and cast, a closed circle to which no one else is privy. The talk is not about the film in progress, for by that time they share so thorough an understanding of the script that further explanations are seldom necessary. His actors speak of an intuitive feeling that develops between them and Bergman, and on the set there is very little "direction" from him as such. His actors also say his temperament has "improved" since his marriage to his wife, Käbi. Nor, on the set, does one observe any temperament in the actors. The atmosphere is calm, friendly, professional, quiet even between takes. There is no assistant director to yell everyone into silence.

Unwittingly, while on a visit to the studio, I usurped the actors' tea break with him. He was in a mood to chat, and took me to the studio restaurant, where we were served large cups of tea and sweet biscuits. His remarks are given in full, and I have edited them only to the extent of lumping them under various headings.

ON HIS FILMS: "I hope it doesn't seem like self-advertising if I tell you that Through a Glass Darkly is the most personal work I have done. Because of it I now feel closer to the solutions I am looking for in the movies I make. The solutions I keep seeking for are of three natures: technical, formal, and aesthetic, but the object being always to come closer and closer to the human beings of the stories. In Through a Glass Darkly, because of the concentration on just four people, I found a new and exciting experience, and I think a new direction for myself. Formerly Illicit Interlude was the movie I felt closest and warmest toward, and I feel close to the new one in much the same way.

"The Devil's Eye was a sort of joke. I felt tired, and rather in a bad mood after The Virgin Spring, and for me, because I sometimes think of such things in musical terms, it was a rondo capricioso. Since I could find no Irish proverb with which to introduce the film, I made one up. I am well acquainted with Shaw's 'Don Juan in Hell,' but it seemed to me there was room for another version. I also enjoyed the chance of allowing Don Juan to tell his own version of his descent into hell, without assistance from Mozart.

"Brink of Life was a special case. It was not my own story, and I did it for what might be called professional reasons. That is, I had to get away for a while from what I, personally, was thinking, feeling, and making. I wanted, in other words, to test my directorial imagination. I spent a long time looking for the right story, and found it in one of six pages that Ulla Isaksson sent me from a volume of stories. I researched in a hospital for a long time before starting the film, because it seemed to me very important to make it absolutely pure. It was a difficult job, and really more in the nature of a study.

"I know there has been talk of a stigmata symbol in that scene in Wild Strawberries, when the old man catches his palm on a nail, and, while I don't necessarily argue with the interpretation, I can say that the symbolism, if it exists, was not meant consciously. I consciously did mean to express something else: for me, the most painful of accidents is hurting my hands, and so it seemed to me that when the old man hurt his hand it was a great pain for him, and a prelude to the painful trial he will then undergo in the remainder of the nightmare. As for the scene at the end of the picture, the one in which the old man views his parents in that idyllic, nostalgic moment, it was meant only to say that we go away from our parents and then back to our parents. Suddenly one understands them, recognizes them as human beings, and in that moment one has grown up.

"In The Virgin Spring the welling up of the spring was not meant as simply the tidy expression of a religious miracle. The spring was the medieval symbol for the water of the feelings. I didn't see how it was possible to allow the picture to end without the spring, for if the father had merely gone home, and there had been a great silence, there would have been no release for the feelings of the people of the story, nor for those of the audience. I have heard, by the way, of the American censoring of the rape scene, but I try never to think about it, for it would disturb me too much. We have film censorship in Sweden, but it is a rather lenient one, in that a particular scene is judged within the context of a whole sequence, or the whole film. I can only handle censorship here, however. It's impossible for me to look after my picture in all countries."

ON OTHER DIRECTORS: "One of the greatest of all is certainly Japan's Kurosawa, but the one I feel closest to in spirit is Fellini. His La Dolce Vita seemed to me very fine, very exciting. I admire Hiroshima, Mon Amour, find it enormously interesting, but with no bearing whatsoever on what I am trying to do. As for the Americans, Hitchcock most of all. He has taught me so much. What he does is always precise, done with professional expertness, and at the same time he is always experimenting. Oh, I like him! Another who I consider one of my teachers was Victor Sjöström, when he was directing films. Carl Dreyer, the Danish director, has never been an influence. I find myself very remote from him and, in fact, his films have never touched me."

ON THE WRITING OF SCRIPTS: "I spend approximately a year on each script that I do. First of all, I write much more than I can use, and after the draft is finished I cut and cut, until everything is cut away except what seems essential. I do the writing either at my villa near Stockholm or at our country place in Dalarna (central Sweden), rising early, usually by five-thirty or six. The writing is done in longhand, and typed up for me afterward.

"I would probably go mad if I had to write a script as they are usually done–that is, putting in long shots, close-ups, and other camera directions. Technical notations in a script are unnecessary, at least for me. It would be boring for everyone, including the actors, to have a script full of such details. All of us who work on the film have a communal feeling about the story, and we know what we have to do. The entire script is discussed in advance with my photographer, and we achieve a rapport, which lasts throughout the shooting. I should mention that there is another kind of detail that I find helpful to include in a script–sensory details, even odors, anything that will help suggest the mood.

"I was hesitant about publishing four of my screenplays in book form, mainly because it seems to me difficult for the general reader to appreciate a work which is not so much literary as a kind of score for the director, the photographer, and the actors."

ON FILM FORM: "Film, as a medium, I don't find as healthful as the theatre, where you aren't nearly as alone, and where there is that wonderful, alive essence renewing itself again and again. If I had to choose one over the other I am sure I would choose the theatre, which has so many dimensions, one of the most important being that sudden meeting of the actor's expression and the audience's feeling. In film one has perhaps a more marvelous vision, but before it can reach an audience it must be translated through the clumsy apparatus of the film studio.

"I find it easier to compare film not to the theatre, or the novel, but to music. In fact, I think of film and music as equals of a sort. In pure film and pure music there is feeling that goes directly to some deeper level of the listener or viewer, and only afterward is it possible to analyze the experience. Not that music and film are the same. Film has its own rhythms, its own manner of pulsation. Yet, I find myself adding less and less music to my films, perhaps because it seems a little to me like adding music to music. The practice of adding a musical score to a film after it has been made–I don't see that at all. I have heard that a musical score can sometimes 'save' a movie, by producing emotions that the film itself hasn't produced. For me, it would only make matters worse. In the case of Through a Glass Darkly, I used a few minutes of a Bach sarabande, but more for mood-setting, I would say. And the same purpose was behind the playing of a Scarlatti sonata in The Devil's Eye. It was my wife who played it, on the cymbala."

FUTURE PLANS: "I have no intention of leaving Sweden, although I have sometimes considered the notion of working abroad. What worries me most about leaving Sweden is the loss of artistic control one might encounter. When I toured with a Swedish dramatic troupe I met David Lean, the British director, in London. He asked me about the people who worked on the films with me, and I told him I worked with eighteen friends. 'Sometimes,' he replied, 'I think I work with ninety enemies.' I have grown up in Sweden, I have my roots here, and I am never frustrated here. It is a very safe and good milieu I work in. I would enjoy visiting the United States, but not to make a film. What would appeal to me most would be to bring a company of Swedish actors to perform some plays.

"After finishing The Communicants and one other film I have in mind, I hope to stop everything for a while. In 1963 I plan to make a journey with my wife, Käbi. We want to study Bach together in a thorough and concentrated way. It's the thing we have most wanted to do since meeting each other. Music has always been important to me privately, and to my work. Will I do something with the material I may gather? I don't know. Perhaps I will write something...."

The talk ended at this point, because a messenger arrived from the set to inform Bergman that all was ready for the next scene. He beckoned me to come with him, and I went with the thin, slightly stooped man, who wore a windbreaker and a woolen cap. The set was the interior of a small Gothic church, complete with ceiling, nave, and fifteenth-century replicas. Waiting for him were Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, and Gunnel Lindblom, all familiar to me from other Bergman films. Quietly, deftly, using his long hands seemingly as much as words, Bergman indicated what he wanted in the scene. Organ music was heard. A take was made, and another. Bergman came over to me with a grin. He indicated with a sweep of his hand the five or six workmen who were on the set.

"It is a little like making home movies," he said. "Yes?"