Original subtitles

INGMAR BERGMAN MAKES A MOVIE

THE SCRIPT

The reason for visiting Ingmar Bergman at the Baltic sea,

on the island where he and K�bi Laretei rented a summer cottage,

stemmed from my theatrical studies 15 years earlier.

I dreamed oflearning how a film director worked.

I knew Bergman was writing

a new film about a priest.

I would rather put him in front of a camera in the very act of writing,

but what writer would have the nerve for that?

I had to wait until he had finished the script.

That was August 11, 1961.

Winter Light begins with a service in a desolate provincial church.

After the mass, the priest is visited by a fisherman and his wife.

Jonas Persson is an introverted man, anxious about the nuclear bomb.

With the best literary intentions,

I ask how Bergman the writer came upon that story.

Well, it so happens

I know a priest in the countryside

living in a distant congregation.

I visited him and he was very sad -

The idea had been tucked away inside me for many years.

He was depressed, and I asked him why.

"Well, a man took his life here,

and I had spoken with him just the day before."

The priest blamed himself mercilessly

for not realizing how serious the situation was.

He blamed himself...

for this man's death,

for not being able to help him in his agony.

He thought of how impervious he had been to the man's suffering.

The film is about this fisherman

and his fear of a coming world war.

He has heard that the Chinese are being educated for war

and that they will have a nuclear bomb at their disposal.

He read it in the paper and brooded over it for half a year.

Where did you find that subject?

I read it in the paper some years ago,

and I was pretty shaken by it.

I guess it's about my own agony as well.

Did you know right away what the fisherman would be brooding over?

Yes, I did.

- You didn't have to go looking for it? - Not at all.

If I'm right, you've directed 24 films.

Twelve of them you wrote yourself.

The other twelve were adaptations of various kinds.

Is there any difference for you in writing between now

and when you started?

Yes, a huge difference.

I've always had a huge complex, great misgivings,

about my own writing.

There are people who have often said, perhaps justifiably,

that I am no writer,

which, in fact, I never claimed to be.

In the past I was haunted by these misgivings,

as well as by the fear

of not getting it right.

It was an obstacle to my writing,

which came down to an act of willpower,

with the accompanying tensions and inhibitions.

There was so much I had to overcome.

During the last few years,

I've stopped worrying

about what people might say about what I am doing, because -

It's not that I don't care,

but I can never please everybody anyway.

I'll find no mercy among those who dislike what I'm doing anyway.

I think I've calmed down a bit on that point.

It will take the form it takes.

Was there a period when you tried to please everyone?

Working in this medium and being a man of the theater,

I'm like the common whore.

I have an enormous need for people to like me and what I'm doing.

That it be accepted and praised and so forth.

It's always painful to be disapproved of.

You've said it's difficult to read a script and visualize what's in it.

What is the actual difficulty?

Does everybody in the film business have this difficulty, even the actors?

Yes, very much so.

It's a very complicated task.

When writing my own scripts,

I try to make them readable

by avoiding a lot of technical instructions.

The script that arrives at the studio

is structured like

a play, a drama, with a lot of scenic instructions.

No technical arrangements, though, for cameras and so on.

Can you anticipate any particular problem,

anything especially bothersome,

or any specific conflict for this film?

Yes. You see, in writing this script,

I put some serious obstacles in my own path.

Even though I know it's hell to work with children and animals,

nevertheless I have a little boy and a dog in it.

And even though I know that a snowfall

that continues throughout an entire scene

is practically impossible,

I have it in there, and I want to solve this problem at any cost,

because I feel it's necessary.

But there are certain limits to what can be accomplished.

Jonas the fisherman pays a visit to the priest,

who is feeling sick and miserable and shaken by a fever.

"Eventually the attack passes and he calms down,

but when he looks up, Jonas is gone.

No footsteps, no doors closing,

no wind whistling through the cracks - just absolute silence.

He goes to the window - no car, no tracks."

Will you use a series of different shots or one continuous shot of the priest?

Well, you see, I will partly use the sound.

You see, when working

in close conjunction with the audio track,

it's like an accompanying chord, although unnoticeable.

The most important thing is to create a complete -

As he recovers from his fever attack,

there is this complete silence.

I would minimize the usual noise in the studio,

or in the church, or in these surroundings.

The normal background noise,

I will minimize even that.

Each movement will be accompanied by almost no sound at all,

thus creating a frightening silence around it.

And as he looks up in this silence,

it will have a powerful impact on the audience, as silences always do.

A silence will hit -

I'm working much more with silence

than with sound.

The silence will hit people incredibly hard, since they don't expect it.

So he looks up during this silence,

and here I'll insert shots of the door,

the window, the chair whereJonas sat,

and then back to him.

So then there's this feeling of a suffocating loneliness

and silence that has fallen upon him.

Are you after the notion that the fisherman's visit

might have been a dream? That it may not have happened?

Yes, but not too obviously. One must be able to think-

I want this eerie sort of feeling, that he never was there, to linger on.

Is this a facial shot of the priest?

Yes, always facial. The priest's eyes are so important.

This is the alpha and the omega for me,

the eyes of the actors.

What the eyes can yield

is for me the essential of all filmed art.

I go on about this only because there's so much

that can't be anticipated when writing, compared to visualizing it.

What will the scenery look like?

For example, there's a scene of the police officer's car

"with its motor running, this being November and outdoors.

He and another man are bending over a body lying by a ditch.

A few boys are standing close by, curious, scared, cold and motionless,

with caps over their faces and running noses. "

This shot will be highly dependent on the choice of the ditch.

Yes, it is extremely complicated,

the choice of exterior sites.

You can search for one damned little piece of road,

ready to kill yourself to find the right one...

that meets your filming needs.

It has to provide the right visual feeling,

the right atmosphere.

It's hard to describe what it might be.

It's always very specific from one time to the next.

Quite ordinary things

might create immense difficulties.

Once the script is completed, production starts for real.

Gunnar Bj�rnstrand and Ingrid Thulin are hired for the leading roles,

Max von Sydow and Gunnel Lindblom for the fisherman and his wife.

In September 1961, the company left for Dalarna to scout for exteriors.

The architect P.A. Lundgren,

photographer Sven Nykvist, and production head Lars-Owe Carlberg.

And then something very typical occurred.

They traveled all the way from Orsa to Falun

on a railway built in part by Ingmar Bergman's grandfather,

in search of a crossroads near which to film.

But they ended up finding it

just a stone's throw from the hotel where the crew stayed,

in the middle of R�ttvik.

They searched for churches as well.

Photographer Sven Nykvist knew he was in for particular lighting problems,

as the story takes place on a cloudy Sunday in November.

Generally one thinks that light on a cloudy day doesn't change,

but to see how it does indeed change

during, let's say, a high mass,

we sat in various churches and studied the light.

Every ten minutes I would take a snapshot

to see how the light was changing, and these proved very useful.

I glued them into the script,

and I'd look at them from time to time while filming.

What characterizes that light?

It's completely shadowless.

In the past we'd have used big effects, big windows,

and so on.

This time we tried to achieve a totally shadowless image,

and that proved to be much more difficult

than using conventional filming technique.

We didn't achieve it just with lights.

We had to build special reflectors and large screens

and work with waxed paper sheets and indirect lighting.

And it was very difficult to light churches with indirect lighting.

Have you always studied real light and its reflections

the same way that you did here?

No, I must admit I haven't.

Earlier films had to be beautifully shot,

the beauty of each image for its own sake.

Fortunately, we've left that behind us entirely.

Earlier one could not do a film with enough coarseness and realism.

We were always trying for a certain beauty.

But making as many films as you do -

you work in Germany and back home -

aren't you tempted to repeat yourself?

No, and that's the fascinating part of my job, and one I like the most:

Changing styles from one film to another,

and working so closely with the director.

Before starting to shoot, you've had intense discussions with him.

It gives you time to get into the feeling of the film.

And by then you've agreed on the result you want.

Right. And then there are the lengthy preparations,

taking your time to run tests until you find the right atmosphere.

Then it's time to start.

Stand by.

Quiet.

Silence.

Camera.

Testing. Bj�rnstrand, take one.

Look into the camera.

Straight ahead, and then turn to the right.

Then you look back again.

Now to the left.

Mago, where are you? - Here.

Take a look here. Stop the camera.

I think they're a bit too long.

I'll use a pair of suspenders.

That might do it.

I think we might need one of those flat ones.

One that closes in the back?

That will make it a bit higher.

That might be good.

Are these supposed to be seen?

I think that would look cleaner.

That's all. I think we're done with that.

Thank you.

Who'd believe you'd put so much effort into ordinary, everyday clothing?

The actors will be filmed over and over until the right pieces are found.

To that end, a clothing expert will be hired.

I asked Mago- Max Goldstein-

ifhe talks with Bergman before sketching the costumes.

Not anymore.

Nowadays, after reading the script, I prepare my sketches,

and then I'm very eager to talk with Ingmar

about everything I have in mind.

And as eager as I am to have that conversation,

Ingmar is just as eager to postpone it.

Why is that?

He explained it to me once.

He feels once he's lived

with these characters for so long,

perhaps a year, or however long it takes him to write a script,

he finds it

downright awkward to get that close to them.

I keep asking what kind of socks they should be wearing,

even about their underwear.

But he wants to keep his distance from all that.

He's not comfortable having his own characters that close to himself.

You built a roof over the whole church.

Did you never light from the ceiling?

In an ordinary film studio, the roof is always open.

There are spotlights up above everything,

and the temptation is to use too much light.

If there's too much light on the hair, there will be halos around their heads,

but that kind of light never exists in real life.

This church that we rebuilt is very large,

but we were so bold as to build a roof on it

so I wouldn't have the chance to light from above.

Not only because of the light, of course.

Normally we would have built it without the roof

so we could place the lights on top of the set.

Let's see. This is the chancel,

and this is the sacristy,

and over there is the organ loft.

And what's that over there?

It's the crypt with a roof over it.

Ingmar, can I talk to you for a moment? I want to show you these things.

This one is really beautiful.

- Are they hymn boards? - Yes.

And they come from different churches?

Yes. This one is from Forsbacka,

and this one from Lillkyrka.

It's very beautiful with its crown.

How old is it?

- About 300 years old. - Are you sure?

- Yes. - What about this one?

A few hundred years.

It's really very nice.

I think I want that one.

K. A. Bergman, usually called K.A. In the business,

is the prop master.

He'll obtain all the objects needed for the film.

Ingmar usually refers to him as the "Mozart of prop masters."

In Winter Light he had an additional function.

There's a sexton in the film named Algot Fr�vik,

who knows more about suffering than the priest has ever known.

This sexton has the same illness as K.A.

What is your illness exactly?

It's called Bechterew's disease. It was discovered by a Russian doctor.

What kind of illness is it?

It's a bad rheumatic ailment that starts in the back,

paralyzing it with cartilage in between the discs.

Then it hits your knees, ankles and shoulders.

But it doesn't affect the hands.

My neck is stiff. I can never bend back and look up.

So I have to walk backwards, and that's hard in my job.

When did this illness hit you?

1952.

It started with a sprained ankle, or so we thought.

We were out on a filming job with Rune Lindstr�m.

The doctors said it was a sprained ankle

and gave me a supportive bandage.

I got better.

This was after having had a cold.

But you've managed to do your job anyway.

Well, I didn't do work of any kind for a few years.

I just could not work.

Then I joined the Svensk Filmindustri, and I jumped in on commercials and such.

Then I joined Ingmar on Wild Strawberries,

and I just continued to get better.

Maybe he's the reason for that.

Do you feel all right back at work again?

Yes, no doubt about that.

You see, staying in bed when you're ill is wrong.

You have to keep moving. Even if it hurts, you have to fight it.

The comfortable atmosphere on the set,

good coworkers and everything - it helps.

You see, I love my job,

especially handling these old objects.

I get to meet a lot of interesting people,

people in the world of museums and antiques.

There is so much to be learned.

The role of Fr�vik-

played by Allan Edwall-

are you working with him?

So far we haven't had time, but we will start soon.

In fact, I'll see him tonight.

He'll watch how I move and walk and so on.

You know, I dance like a ballet god.

I'm sure it will be okay.

He's a terrific guy to work with.

I think that's enough for this first test.

I think that looks good now.

Thank you.

Why do you pluck your eyebrows like that?

These eyebrows have been in a lot of films,

and they've been cut and shaved every time,

so they tend to grow back very thick.

And for this old schoolboy I'm playing now,

they need to be slightly thinner.

Thick eyebrows are too virile, while the smooth look on top is not.

They need to match.

One issue especially interests me.

What did Ingmar Bergman say to you when he handed you the script?

How much did he comment on it,

and how much did he leave unaddressed?

Unaddressed...

He doesn't interpret his writing for you. He doesn't like to do that.

Did you like the character or dislike him?

I liked him

because he's so universal.

If you were to judge him, would you be gentle or harsh on him?

His qualities as a person.

He's a strong man.

He does his job, despite the great doubts he suffers.

He has the willpower to do the right thing.

That I admire.

He keeps at it, despite everything.

That I like.

He's an ordinary man.

Not a genius. Just a normal human being.

Anybody can identify with him, really.

You just mentioned the schoolboy in him. How does that fit in?

Perhaps he's not a very good psychologist.

Perhaps he doesn't reach his congregation in any truly imaginative way,

and this weighs on him as a priest in this one case.

- He's a little frozen and lonely. - Yes.

Frozen and locked up inside himself.

Will the audience like this character?

There is no glamour in him. None at all.

That's difficult.

Yes, it's difficult for the audience.

One never knows how he will engage the audience.

Your films are usually connected.

Can you say how this film is connected to others you've made?

In theme it's connected to, for instance,

Through a Glass Darkly,

and to The Virgin Spring.

But also through the structure, the format of a chamber play.

I have always felt The Virgin Spring is a form of chamber music.

And so is Through a Glass Darkly, and even more so.

It's composed like chamber music.

It's even in three movements,

and it's very limited in the number of actors, and so on.

As for theme, all three films deal with changes

in the image of God.

What can you say about that?

Though it's very complicated, I will try,

though I'm not sure I can.

In my earlier works I always left the issue open -

What issue?

The existence of God.

In The Virgin Spring,

I let God answer in the form of a ballad,

as the spring begins to flow.

For me that was

a timid way of closing in on the issue,

and setting forth my own views

on the reality of God.

In Through a Glass Darkly, it is even more clearly visible.

The gist of it, and the credo behind it,

is that God is love and love is God.

The proof of God

is the existence of love

as something very concrete in the human world.

And then you know, which is the eerie part,

I've taken on this whole problem

in Winter Light.

To be forced to tear apart this whole idea of God,

which is a search for security.

Now I've tried to find

one that is even broader-

a more distinct and clear idea of God.

Why did you have to tear apart the idea of God from Through a Glass Darkly?

Well, think about it. It's obvious why.

Here's this fisherman with his fear of the Chinese

and their latent threat of war.

It's hard to tell a man sitting in front of you,

"Stop worrying about the Chinese, because God is love."

Or: "You should go on feeling secure, as love is what matters."

It does exist in the world, you know, in a very real way.

Would you say that idea of God is rather narrow,

that it's based only on security?

Yes, I think so.

I have felt that more and more.

- Like the security of a child? - Yes.

I had to purge myself, and very painfully too,

of that old idea of God, where God is the father.

A father-son-like relationship.

A God of one's own creation, a God of security.

It was quite an ordeal, wrestling with this concept.

Deep down, this is what the film is about.

To state it simply, your first period of filmmaking

was a rebellion against authorities and fathers of different kinds.

Then there was a long series of reconciliations

in Wild Strawberries and other films

where you accepted the secure, fatherly image of God.

Yes, it all began there. That's how I had to do it.

First revolution and rebellion against the father figure,

and then acceptance.

I could then calmly set it aside,

and not project a paternal image onto God.

I understand you're very careful in this new film...

not to propose a new image of God?

That's right.

The drama and the passion

don't take place in Tomas, the protagonist,

but in the nonbeliever M�rta,

who carries in her the seed of a new image of God.

She's the one who has the will and drive for life in her,

and she passes them on to Tomas.

Sometimes you focus on religious themes in a series of movies,

and then you make other kinds of movies.

They seem to come in waves.

Yes, they come in intervals.

Like with The Seventh Seal?

I wrote my way out of my agony,

this huge latent fear of death that I managed to purge.

It's like the separation between the knight and J�ns.

The rationalist and the seeker.

After that, the religious problem left me in peace for a long time.

So you managed to get rid of the fear of dying by writing about it?

Either I did away with that fear through writing,

or in the course of writing I discovered

it was no longer so intrusive

or threatening.

The bottom line is it's gone.

This manuscript is dated Thursday, August 7 th, 1961,

but farther down on the page there are three letters: SDG.

Can you tell me what they stand for?

That's my own little secret.

It might seem a little unusual.

You know Bach?

- Johann Sebastian? - Yes.

He wrote SDG on his compositions.

It's Latin. Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone be the glory."

Perhaps it's presumptuous of me to write the same,

but I have a feeling that l-

in some way, anonymously, objectively-

have done this for the glory of God,

and would like to give it to Him as it is.

As if we were

participating in building a cathedral, you know.

That's how I feel, and that's why I have to add those three letters.

Isn't that the enormous contradiction

that people have difficulty understanding in your work?

On the one hand, your wild ambition,

and on the other hand, your dream ofbeing totally anonymous,

like a single brick in a building made by a good builder.

Yeah, but the older I get-

Of course, I've had my glory, my worldly-

I've had everything of that kind that you can get,

and have discovered that it's indifferent, ridiculous, quite empty,

and, in fact, damned troublesome.

So it isn't so hard for this man Bergman

to want to be an anonymous creator,

now that I've had it all.

It's an urge I've had forever,

to be an anonymous part of the whole,

even in my own creative process.

To leave it all behind,

this confounded struggle for originality

and artistic-

A sort of IngemarJohansson of the arts,

hitting hard- or, better still, harder- every time,

jumping higher and faster.

Instead, it's about calming down and quietly resting

in the service of the congregation.

Well, let's go see how you fit your stone into this structure.