"Private" "Bergman's answering machine." "Go ahead." "The demons don't like fresh air." "What they like best is if you stay in bed with cold feet." "I always take a walk after breakfast." "It usually lasts around somewhere around 30- 45 minutes." "Then I sit down, always at a fixed time and write for three hours." "Then I eat my lunch that I've prepared myself and read a book for a while until 3 p.m. When I go to my cinema." "For a person as disorganised as I am and who finds it so hard to look after himself it's absolutely vital to have these strict routines." "Because if I started interfering with them nothing would get done." "It sounds like a lonely life." "On the isle of Fårö?" "I'm never lonely." "I never think of myself as lonely." "My housekeeper comes at 3 p." "M and cleans, and cooks and gives me lunch and then goes." "Sometimes I go days without speaking to a soul." "I think: "I should make that call", but I put it off." "Because there's something pleasurable about not talking." "But then I love talking, so it's not that." "But sometimes it can be nice..." "It's not like I sit here philosophising because I'm no good at that." "It's just this thing with silence that's so wonderful." "PRIVATE" " BEWARE OF THE DOG" " Your fireplace is interesting." " Yes, it is." "It was like this." "I'd decided that I'd wanted a big room..." "A large, open room." "And I had two things..." "Grandma's baroque cupboard and that clock over there." "I'd seen a Russian film, with a Russian fireplace." "I'd decided that this is where I'd sit I'd sketched this fireplace for the architect..." "Anyway, I'd sit here with a glass of red wine and watch the snowstorms and the sea." "And I'd have the fire going and I'd sit here and meditate." "And I designed the fireplace as it looked in the film." "In the film, this is where an old woman slept." "Because it was the warmest place in the house." "Have you lain here, then?" "Sometimes at night." "I often can't sleep so I wander around my 56m-Iong house to calm my legs down a bit." "And I lie down here." "And watch the sunrise." "Come over here..." " Is the picture in shot?" " Yes." "This is part of an old peasant wall-painting." "I saw it in an antique shop and was enchanted by it." "It's actually of St Jonah in the belly of the whale." "But I saw straight away what it really depicted." "Do you know what that is?" "It depicts the artist, the critics and the audience." "Here is the audience, and here is the artist and here are the critics." "The audience are doing nothing to save their artist." "There's even someone trying to force him into the whale." "How much of the house is your own design?" "Are you getting me or both of us?" "I think it's important that we're both in shot!" "It was like this, that the wonderful architect Kjell Abrahamsson said:" ""Draw and write down what you want and I'll do the technical bit."" "So I drew and wrote down a list of what I wanted." "Our point of departure was this big room." "And the reason why this room is so big  was this fireplace in the middle." "And let's see..." "Ever since my childhood we've had a grandfather clock like this at home." "And as there's so much silence here it's wonderful to sit here, like at night..." "And you hear it tick..." "You'll know from my films that I've always had a weakness for ticking clocks." "Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)" "Cries and Whispers (1973)" "Fanny and Alexander (1982)" "This is my father's confirmation watch." "It's over 100 years old..." "I was with Father just after he died." "And there was the watch, lying on his bedside table." "It was going." "And I took it." "At the same time, I took this ring." "Father's wedding ring." "It says: "Karin"." ""13 March, 1913"." "I'd seen photos of my mother, when I was a child she was certainly very pretty." "She had long, incredibly beautiful hair which went all the way down to the small of her back." "I was a keen crier when I was a child and a keen cuddler." "The one person who I wanted to be loved and cuddled by was Mother." "I besieged my mother with caresses." "And she pushed me away." "She even went to a child doctor with me because she thought I was a problem like that." "In that I cried a lot and needed wanted to be stroked and caressed." "The doctor took all this seriously and said that she had to wean the boy off such behaviour." "Because she had to remember that he wasn't a girl and must be raised to be a boy, a young man." "They were overjoyed when they got a little girl." "I was 4, my brother 8." "They were ecstatic." "So suddenly we saw Father go around carrying this fat, repulsive, screaming little wretch." "And sitting singing for her and all that." "Mother and Father were radiant!" "It was then that my brother and I decided that she was to be killed." "I really admired my brother as he was four years older than me  and I considered it a thing of honour to get to kill her." "My brother had instructed me to climb up on a chair over her cot and take her by the throat and hold tight." "I was to throttle her." "I felt deeply honoured to do it." "My brother stood guard by the door and made sure no one came in." "It was a Sunday and there was some church celebration..." "I recall that the church bells were ringing." "So I climbed up..." "But I'd misunderstood something in his instructions so I squeezed her chest instead." "So she woke and started screaming until she was red in the face..." "Someone in the kitchen must have heard her." "I got scared and fell off the chair so no one ever found out that this was a murder plot." "This threw us, my brother and me." "I said, "If you want her killed, you'll have to do it yourself."" "Father, and I've inherited this, was very sensitive to loud noises." "And what's more he was bottling up a terrible rage." "At times, he couldn't control this rage and we were beaten a great deal." "Our son, Ernst Ingmar." "Akad." "Hospital, Uppsala 14 July 1918." "What traits did you inherit from your mother and father?" "I imagine now, as an old man that I inherited a lot from Mother." "Mother was actually a great doer and organiser." "All these special occasions were directed by Mother." "I don't recall Father ever getting involved." "And I guess I've got some worse sides too from Mother." "She was..." "She was a very resolute person and I guess liked bossing people around or whatever you'd call it." " Power-hungry?" " Yes..." "I guess Mother was very much a power person." "My greatest weakness  as a human being too, the two usually go together  is my over- protective attitude." "I have a horrible need to organise and control others." "It's a kind of megalomania, a need for power." "You grew up in Stockholm, in a big park near a big forest in a vicarage near Sophiahemmet hospital." "What was it like?" "It was nice to have that park." "In the park, a little hidden away, was the cemetery chapel." "The morgue." "I was friends with the vergers and the morticians." "Once, someone thought it funny to lock me in the morgue." "I remember it as a terrifying experience." "I can still recall how horribly frightened I was." "There was a young woman lying there." "She had a sheet over her, but her face was exposed." "And I walked round her and looked at her." "They hadn't closed her eyes fully  and all of a sudden I noticed that she was watching me." "I stood there screaming and hammering on the door." "Someone eventually let me out, but I still sometimes have dreams about it." "I sometimes go up to Uppsala and stroll around." "Grandma lived in a big flat there and had an old housekeeper." "Miss Nilsson." "But we usually called her Lalla." "It was just the two of them." "I loved going to Grandma's to that big, old-fashioned apartment which had so many which was so secretive." "Grandma's apartment was, I guess, partly transferred to "Fanny and Alexander"." "Alexander!" "How are you?" "Shall we play cards before dinner?" "Grandma enjoyed going to the cinema." "She loved going to the cinema." "Grandma always wore galoshes and Grandma didn't like the love scenes  which is where we completely differed, because I loved them." "So she always started to rub her galoshes, which then squeaked." "We had silent films then, with a pianist and an orchestra and to me those squeaking galoshes could be heard in the whole cinema." "It was really embarrassing  and prevented me from enjoying the loves scenes as much as I'd wished." "Sometimes, before I go to sleep I wander around Grandma's apartment." "And I can remember exactly where the furniture was what the paintings looked like, where the clocks hung what the carpets looked like, smelt like how you passed from one room to the other..." "It's a kind of little bedtime ritual that can be it can be really nice to have." "I'm..." "I still have direct connections with my earliest childhood." "I guess that's why I still like playing." "I mean my profession." "It's a kind of game." "Tell me about your first impressions of Fårö." "It was 1960, 61." "I can't remember." "But I recall that when I got out of the car and looked around I experienced something that was very special." "A strange sense of having come home." "People here are very good to me." "I don't have to feel like a stranger." "And they're extremely considerate and fully respect my need for solitude." "When people come and ask where Ingmar Bergman lives they say that they've got no idea." "Where have you brought us now?" "To a place that even back then we thought was magical." "And it always has been for me." "Suddenly we found ourselves here  and decided that here, and nowhere else, was where we'd film "Persona"." "Then we continued on up here..." "It was this wonderful proximity to the sea..." "The sound was very disturbing at times..." "For the actors and me it was highly evocative." "And this was before you became an islander." " It was 19..." " 65, I think." "1964, 65..." "It was 65." "And I guess I'd made a decision to live on Fårö the rest of my life." "I remember saying to Sven Nykvist, the photographer..." ""This is where I'm going to live."" "And he said, "Wait a minute..."" ""There's a place" "a few hundred meters away, let's go and look."" "So that evening we went..." "To be continued...!" "It's great seeing the girls here..." "They're so young." "That's Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann." " And what happens between them?" " That's confidential." "Top secret." "And very exciting." " They're very similar." "Do you use that?" " Indeed." "The idea came to me when I saw photos of them side by side." "And I thought, "This is jolly interesting!"" ""Persona" is a great film, and I'm glad I got to make it." "I can't help wondering when I see the three of you..." "A few years before, you'd lived with Bibi Andersson." "And after the film you start living with Liv." "What's that all about?" "!" "And what did it mean for the filming?" "It's..." "Answer that one if you can..." "You... you..." "I can't say that I was still young and inexperienced when I made that film." "I'd been married a number of times, and I had many children..." " You were 47 then." " Was I?" "But I usually say that I left puberty when I was 58." "I guess I was in a kind of..." "And then there's another thing that you learn over the years, but I was very slow to pick up..." "Drama and film are incontrovertibly two professions that are immensely erotically charged." "The director tries to be perfect." "As a person, an artist," "And the actors and actresses also try to be perfect." "And this can easily give rise to incredibly pleasurable tensions." "I've been married five times, I won't deny it." "Most of my marriages have lasted five years." "My marriage to Ingrid lasted 24 years." "I've been married to or lived with a number of women." "Not that many." "But magnificent, gifted people." "I'm proud of them and they've taught me a great deal." "70th birthday, 14 July 1988" "The women are one thing, but all the children?" "Nine of them, who you have "left" from different marriages." "Do you have a bad conscience over abandoning them?" "I had a bad conscience until I discovered that having a bad conscience over something so gravely serious as leaving your children is mere affectation." "It's a way of achieving a little suffering  that can't for a moment be equated with the suffering you've caused." "I've been "family-lazy", you could say." "It's quite simply that I haven't put an ounce of effort into my families." "I never have done." "There's a bad father-son relationship in your latest production." " Do you recognise yourself in that?" " Oh, yes." "Dad?" "Where does all this hostility come from?" "Speak for yourself, my son." "Many years ago -you were 18- I tried to get close." "You'd been ill, and your mother wanted us to talk things through." "So I said to you.:" ""I know I've been a bad father."" ""But I want to improve."" "And you screamed, yes screamed:" ""A bad father?" "!" "You've never been a father to me!"" "And you refused to accept my "forced efforts"." "And that was that." "One should respect genuine hate." "And I respect yours." "But actually I couldn't give a damn either way." "SWITCH OFF THE LIGHTS" "There's a lady here too!" "Was it good?" " Was it good?" " At least I know you're alive!" "I thought: "Let's see how long he can stand there!"" "Now we'll go in." "Can't you come inside and receive us?" "This picture was made by a girl, a very skilful weaver called Anita Grede." "We had the world premiére of "The Magic Flute" here in this room." "The room wasn't a cinema then but a film studio." "We'd made much of "Scenes From a Marriage" here." "And before it was a studio, it was a barn." "And then Anita came up with this great idea that this would be the Magic Flute on Fårö." "Here's the sea and the moon, here are the stone fences..." "Here's Sarastro, the sorcerer, who everyone thinks is like me." "Though I can't see it." "I remember that we inaugurated the cinema  with Chaplin's "Circus", which I show every birthday." " July 14." " Yes." "The room gets full of kids." "We're like kids all of us!" "Here's something I want to show you..." "Private Confessions (1996)" "Do you believe in God, Uncle Jakob?" "A Father in Heaven, a God of Love?" "A God with hands, and a heart and watching eyes?" "Don't use the word "God"." "Say "Holiness"." "There's holiness in everyone." "Human holiness." "Everything else is attributes, disguise" " Manifestation and trickery." "You can never figure out or capture human holiness." "At the same time..." "it's something to cling to." "Something tangible, lasting unto death." "What happens then is hidden from us." "Only the poets, musicians and saints" " May depict that which we can but discern.:" "The inconceivable." "They've seen, known, understood" " Not fully, but in fragments." "For me, it's a comfort to think about human holiness." "We've been speaking a lot about the religious aspects of my oeuvre." "And really we should try to concentrate it..." "And instead of sitting here stammering through an explanation I think the Bishop here has put it succinctly." "He says exactly what I feel:" "That we shouldn't talk about God, but about the holiness within man." "And that through the musicians the prophets and saints we've been enlightened about other worlds." "Particularly through music, of course." "We ask:" ""Where does music come from?"" "I've asked so many musicians famous musicians and less famous why we have music, where it comes from." "And the strange thing is, they've never had a proper answer." "You're constantly surrounded by music, even at home." "That's true." "It's been a part of my life for many many years." "I like it when it rains in summer." "When it rains that peaceful, incessant, long and incredibly wet rain." "I derive indescribable joy from it." "Most of all I like the autumn." "Strindberg writes in "The Storm":" ""The autumn is my season, lads!"" "I find that bright, white light  which is also an image of summer in your films, very threatening." "I've never experienced bright light as anything friendly." "But as something threatening." "My ghosts my daemons, phantoms and spirits never appear at night." "They often appear in bright daylight." "Friday night I wake at 2 a.m. From a very deep sleep." "I don't know where I am." "Suddenly feel infected." "Merciless anxiety." "How can I protect myself against the terror suffocating me?" "Dear God, don't let me lose my mind." "May I make it through." "May I gain strength and joy." "Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven't thought about death." "Or when the thought of death hasn't touched me in some way." "I wrote a film about death." "It was "The Seventh Seal"." "It was excellent therapy." "Sometimes the things you do, the things you write can be therapeutic." "And this was..." "But then something curious happened." "What happened was that..." "I developed an abscess with early signs of blood poisoning and the swelling had to be cut away." "This was done at the Sophiahemmet hospital." "I felt a little prick and then... nothing." "Eight hours of my life, you see are completely obliterated." "I was hypersensitive to the anaesthetic  and they'd given me too much." "This fascinated me, for I thought:" ""Is this what death is like?"" "You're a light that's lit." "And then one day it's extinguished." "There's nothing, no flame left." "So death is nothing to be afraid of." "It's something exceedingly merciful." "Something magnificent." "So having understood that, I lived a contented life." "I noticed that my daily thoughts of death could be brushed aside." "They always came especially during my witching hour just before dawn but I could dismiss them by telling myself they were nothing." "From being something, suddenly I'm nothing." "I liked that idea." "And then came the big problem." "The devastating problem." "That was when Ingrid died almost exactly eight years ago." "And, logically, I said to myself:" ""I'll never see Ingrid again."" ""She's gone for ever."" "But the strange thing is that I feel Ingrid's presence, especially here on Fårö." "Acutely." "And I think:" ""I can't feel her presence if she doesn't exist, can I?"" "So this operation was a chemical reaction." "It wasn't real death, but an artificial death." "In actual death maybe Ingrid is waiting for me and that she exists." "And she'll come to meet me." "I think a lot about death these days." "I think..." "One morning I'm walking through the forest to the river." "It's an autumn day-misty." "Everything's still, quiet." "Then I see someone by the gate." "She walks towards me." "She's wearing a denim skirt, a blue cardigan..." "She's barefoot." "She's wearing her hair in plaits." "And she's walking towards me." "Anna's walking towards me, there by the gate." "And I realise that I'm dead." "Then the strangest thing happens." "I think.: "Is it this simple?"" "We spend our lives wondering about death." "What does and doesn't follow..." "And it's really this simple." "I accept that I'm going to meet Ingrid." "And I've completely erased that other nightmare thought that I'll never again meet her." "I acknowledge the fact that I'm going to meet Ingrid." "You were married to Ingrid for 24 years." "What was it about her that made you stay with her so long?" "Finally, after all those women...?" "What did she have that the others didn't?" "I go off in different directions." "Sometimes my reality is completely distorted." "I've managed to build up a picture of reality that is completely crazy." "Ingrid had her feet planted firmly on the ground." "She..." "In that she had such solid contact with the real world" " I was able to profit from it." "I think she resembles your mother." "You could be right!" "Your daemons." "What are they?" "What do they look like?" "There's an enormous number of them." "I've actually prepared for this question." "So I've written the daemons down." "Some of them at least." "I've made a list." "The worst one is the Daemon of Disaster." "The thing is that I have a high state of disaster-preparedness." "This means that you imagine that everything you do in a day everything you plan for that day onwards will go terribly wrong." "And then I've got a daemon it's ridiculous, but I've had it all my life..." "It's the Daemon of Fear." "I'm actually scared of everything." "Not just cats and dogs and insects and birds which might come flying into the room if I've got the window open..." "I'm afraid of many different kinds of people." "Afraid of large crowds..." "You could say I'm a profoundly scared person." "And then there's a daemon that's difficult to handle." "If you were to name it, it'd be the Daemon of Rage." "Why I have it I don't know, but I inherited it from both my parents." "It means I'm an irascible person." "I've got a terrible temper." "Then there's this family of daemons here." "The Daemon of Pedantry, the Daemon of Punctuality the Daemon of Order..." "They're all related." "They can sometimes be troublesome for the people who share my private life and my professional life." "But then again it's a good thing, in this profession in which we deal with something so incredibly irrational  as people's emotions." "You can't waste time on irrelevant emotions." "There must be order, tranquillity and harmony and preferably fun." "It's very good if someone has a joke to tell." "A bit of light relief." "But it's got to be orderly." "I hate it when people turn up at the last second." "Then there's an awkward daemon..." "I'm nearly done and that's the Daemon of Grudges." "I've got a memory like an elephant." "Someone once said to me:" ""You're not that grudge-bearing."" ""But you remember things for 30- 40 years."" " Just a short list on that side." " A very short list." "And these are the daemons that I don't have." "One could be called the "Daemon of Nothingness"." "This quite simply is when my creativity or my imagination abandons me." "It means that things get totally silent, totally empty." "And there's nothing there." "But this has never happened to me and that's something for which I'm profoundly grateful." "In January, 2004, Ingmar Bergman emptied his apartment in Stockholm  and his room at the Dramatic Theatre." "He has decided to never again leave his island, Fårö."