Simon: What about Joyce, which must be very difficult, I imagine?

Bergman: Yes, that is too much for me. I have read Ulysses but it was out of duty more than anything else.

Simon: Was it the language that made it so difficult?

Bergman: I read it in a Swedish translation because I read extremely slowly.

Simon: Even in Swedish?

Bergman: Yes, when I read, I read as slowly as if I were reading aloud. It takes me a lot of time, but I remember everything. I don't know why the slowness, but perhaps it's my profession: when I read a play I read as if it were being acted.

Simon: In connection with Hour of the Wolf and The Magician, I noticed a certain indebtedness to E.T. A. Hoffmann. He must be someone you like.

Bergman: Yes, very much.

Simon: Was he relevant to The Magician?

Bergman: More to the Hour of the Wolf. In Hour of the Wolf I really played with him.

Simon: Do you have any absolute favourites among your films?

Bergman: No. They are old pictures and already far, far away.

Simon: Do you always like the latest one best?

Bergman: No, on the contrary; the latest one is like an infant: it protests and it makes difficulties and it is very much alive. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I dislike it, but in a very unneurotic way. No, I think I have made just one picture that I really like, and that is Winter Light (The Communicants). That is my only picture about which I feel that I have started here and ended there and that everything along the way has obeyed me. Everything is exactly as I wanted to have it, in every second of this picture. I couldn't make this picture today; it's impossible; but I saw it a few weeks ago together with a friend and I was very satisfied. I very much prefer it to, say, Through a Glass Darkly, which, socially speaking, I don't like any more. It's an étude, a study, an exercise; it's a beginning, but it's a pudding. It's so far away, I can't be sure, but my feeling is that it's a pudding, a muddle. Some parts of it are no good, some are really cinematographic, but it can't compare with The Communicants.

Simon: One has the feeling that the Ingmar Bergman figure in the films, at least in the chamber-film phase, is usually Max von Sydow.

Bergman: No, no, not at all. I say, like Flaubert, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." I am all of them, I am inside all of them. It's not especially Max von Sydow or Gunnar Björnstrand or Ingrid Thulin.

Simon: Do you, when you write a part, have a specific actor in mind?

Bergman: Always, always, yes. It's very important. I always want to know the actor before I write a script. I don't know why, but I hear a voice, and see the behaviour. Perhaps it is wrong, I don't know, but we have always worked together.

Simon: It's wonderful to have such good actors as you have.

Bergman: I think it is good, this tradition here in Sweden, that all are working in the theatre, that we work together in different media.

Simon: It is interesting to me that some people do not come back in your films, even though I like them. For instance, I like Maud Hansson very much, but I only saw her twice in your films; Margit Carlqvist only once. Is there some special reason why they don't reappear?

Bergman: Very neurotic girls. I don't like to work with neurotic people; because they have to play neurotics, they should not be neurotics; but when they are, they are a disturbance to the work. Because the work in itself is so difficult, we must be very calm and very controlled. The work must be nice, like a family, like joy. We must have a feeling of security and loyalty. If people are without contact and completely imprisoned in themselves, I can still use them, but they endanger the whole production and I don't like that.

Simon: The men presumably are less of a problem, because they seem to last longer than the women.

Bergman: Yes. We have grown up together and we have worked together.

Simon: I wish I could see that documentary that you did about your island, except that I might not understand any of it.

Bergman: It's difficult to understand. It was necessary to make it, to try; you know I've lived there four years now and I know these people and I know their difficulties and I wanted to tell about them and let themselves tell about it all.

Simon: Was it fun handling the camera yourself?

Bergman: Yet, it's always so; Sven was with me, but I conducted the interviews for the first time in my life. It was a nice experience.

Simon: Tell me, are there any film-makers that influenced you in any way, that you learned something from, or do you feel completely self-made?

Bergman: No, no, no, no. I have grown up in a tradition. I don't think somebody just becomes a director, you know. We are like stones in a building, all of us. We all depend on the people coming before; I am just a part of this. So, I depend very much on a Swedish film tradition, Sjöström and Stiller, and on the Swedish theatre tradition—Sjöberg has meant a lot to me. He is my neighbour. He is marvellous. And then, you know, when I was young, nineteen or twenty years old, I saw the French pictures—Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows), Duvivier and Marcel Carné.

Simon: Did you like Les Enfants du Paradis?

Bergman: Not very much. It's a bit boring. Of course, I liked parts of it. But most of all I liked Quai des Brumes.

Simon: What about La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game)?

Bergman: They told me that Smiles of a Summer Night had some similarities; but I didn't know that, because I hadn't seen it. And then, you know, I have a collection of sixteen-millimetre films, and now I own it.

Simon: Do you like it?

Bergman: Not very much. I don't like Renoir very much. But then, of course, I always have seen pictures; I like to go to the movies. I'm a moviegoer.

Simon: What about Carl Dreyer?

Bergman: Yes, in a protesting way.

Simon: Against it?

Bergman: Yes, some of his pictures have infected me. But in a very strange way, he has always been an amateur. Like Antonioni.

Simon: I think in a way, you have done what Dreyer wanted to do.

Bergman: Yes.

Simon: But what about Antonioni?

Bergman: I have met him once.

Simon: Did you get along with him?

Bergman: Yes, we had a wonderful contact. I liked him extremely much. I liked his courage; he is a completely honest man.

Simon: Whereas Fellini, I think, is not so honest a man.

Bergman: No, no, please! Fellini is Fellini. He is not honest, he is not dishonest, he is just Fellini. And he is not responsible. You cannot put moralistic points of view on Fellini; it is impossible. He is just—I love him.

Simon: Yes, he is very charming.

Bergman: No, much more than that. I think he has not made his real pictures yet.

Simon: I think he has made two great films, The White Sheik and I Vitelloni.

Bergman: Yes, but you know, I am hopelessly in love with this man. Completely. Because, I don't know why, I have met him a few times and...

Simon: This joint project of yours with him has been abandoned, hasn't it?

Bergman: It collapsed. Of course it collapsed, because I am a pedant and he is not.

Simon: I understand he submitted an outline that was half a page long.

Bergman: Yes, yes, exactly, and I was sitting writing my screenplay.

Simon: How was it to be? How were the two parts to connect?

Bergman: That was the wrong way from the beginning. That is the damnation of this movie business, in the economical sense. Because, you know, our idea was to choose five or six actors, to have a crew of about six to ten people; to have some money; to have an empty studio and to start and just to make a dialogue and just to invent things, to improvise, to play together.

Simon: So there was not to be one Bergman half and one Fellini half?

Bergman: No. And then the economic interests came in and the Americans came in, and we tried to explain what we wanted to do. And they said yes, yes, yes—more or less—but then he had no money and he was in a bad situation and he was tired.

Simon: Fellini?

Bergman: Yes, after Satyricon, of course. And he was at work on Satyricon and I couldn't wait. Then suddenly we said, all right, I make my part and you make your part, and then we meet in the beginning and at the end. The whole project collapsed at that moment and I am sorry for that. I can teach him something, and he can teach me something.

Simon: Maybe in the future.

Bergman: Perhaps. When we are older and cleverer. I think it all collapsed because the Americans couldn't understand what we really intended to do. But, really, he was extremely difficult, though that means nothing because I love his work and I love him as a person, if he is a person, which I doubt, because he has no limits; he's just like quicksilver—all over the place. I have never seen anybody like that before.

He is enormously intuitive. He is intuitive; he is creative; he is an enormous force. He is burning inside with such heat. Collapsing. Do you understand what I mean? The heat from his creative mind, it melts him. He suffers from it; he suffers physically from it. One day when he can manage this heat and can set it free, I think he will make pictures you have never seen in your life. He is rich. As every real artist, he will go back to his sources one day. He will find his way back.

Simon: What I particularly admire in you is that you always change and develop; and as you learn new things you teach them to the world. Very few artists have been able to do that. Stravinsky, Picasso, a few others. But most of them repeat themselves.

Bergman: It's my way of living. I am always curious. It has to do only with that. No matter how depressed I am, I always wake up in the morning, in the very early morning, a bit curious: what will happen today? Sometimes I am very afraid. But always, always, even if it is completely black—inside and outside—I always feel something very strange—a curiosity.

And then, to express, to be in touch with other human beings. To mix experiences, to be involved; that's my life. If I am isolated or feel no contact or something like that, it is catastrophic for me. So I always try to be in contact. It is very difficult to tell you, but if you have a completely unneurotic relationship—I don't say I'm unneurotic, because I'm very neurotic—but if you have a non-neurotic relation to your work, it gives you so much joy and helps you such a lot and gives you a form, a discipline, such honest help. So, I just go on.

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