Simon: I am only interested in this from your own point of view. Tell me more about your feelings about Antonioni, because I think it'll tell more about you in a way.

Bergman: The strange thing is that I admire him more now that I have met him than when I only saw his pictures; because I have suddenly understood what he is doing. I understand that everything in his mind, in his point of view, in his personal behaviour is against his film-making. And still he makes his pictures.

Simon: How do you mean "against"?

Bergman: It all presents obstacles.

Simon: What is your favourite Antonioni film?

Bergman: I like most of all La Notte, because he had a marvellous actress in it.

Simon: Yes, Jeanne Moreau. But he didn't do very much with her.

Bergman: No, he never does, he never comes in contact with actors. They don't know what he wants, and he doesn't know how to talk to them.

Simon: He knew how to talk to Monica Vitti.

Bergman: I don't think so. But, you know, I like people who even if everything else is against them, continue, and I like and admire...I think it was marvellous that this man, this sleepless, tortured, scared man went to America to make a picture about Americans. This is a Don Quixote. And I said to him I could never have courage like that, because I haven't even been in America yet. I think even the thought of going to America, even with a return ticket in my hand, scares me, and I think he had such courage to go to America—to disappear into the desert with his crew and to stay there. He is a strange man, he is a marvellous man, and I admire him very, very much.

Simon: Perhaps you like the man better than his films.

Bergman: Yes, in a way. Because to me his films always have been a little, little bit boring, and we must be aware that the boring in art is very good in a way, but his is a little bit too boring. But after meeting him, all my reservations are gone.

Simon: When I first saw L'Avventura, I was a little bit bored, too, but on each reseeing it gets bigger and better. Have you seen it more than once?

Bergman: Yes, I like it very much, too. But to go on about directors or film-makers who have influenced me…technically, Cukor, very much.

Simon: In what way technically?

Bergman: In the editing. In the beginning we had no schools here for film-making. The only way of learning film-making was to be an assistant to a director—I was an assistant to Sjöberg—and to see pictures. And we had no film library, we had nothing like that when I was learning. Young students didn't get any money to go abroad; we were shut off, we were just sitting here.

Simon: How about Hitchcock? Is he someone you learned from?

Bergman: Yes, of course.

Simon: Technically, I suppose. But isn't there a great intellectual emptiness in his work?

Bergman: Completely, but I think he's a very good technician. And he has something in Psycho, he had some moments. Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells very much about him. Not very good things. He is completely infantile, and I would like to know more—no, I don't want to know—about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women. But this picture is very interesting. I learned a lot from all those Americans who knew their profession.

Simon: I find it's a terrible notion in modern film criticism that these people were artists, when they were really technicians. We must distinguish between an artist and a technician.

Bergman: Yes, that's important.

Simon: Modern film criticism tends not to distinguish. People like Raoul Walsh or Howard Hawks don't know what art is. They merely have marvellous techniques, some of them.

Bergman: They have told their stories and they made their films in a good, effective way. That is a duty: effectiveness in telling a story.

Simon: Yes, that's a very good minimum, but it's only a minimum.

Bergman: But it's difficult.

Simon: Are there any young film-makers that you particularly like? I hope you don't like Godard?

Bergman: No, no, no.

Simon: I detest him.

Bergman: Yes, I do, too. In this profession, I always admire people who are going on, who have a sort of idea and, however crazy it is, are putting it through; they are putting people and things together, and they make something. I always admire this. But I can't see his pictures. I sit for perhaps twenty-five or thirty or fifty minutes and then I have to leave, because his pictures make me so nervous. I have the feeling the whole time that he wants to tell me things, but I don't understand what it is, and sometimes I have the feeling that he's bluffing, double-crossing me. But what about this young Czechoslovakian director, Milos Forman? Have you seen his work? I like him very, very much.

Simon: There are other Czechs whom I like better. I think Menzel may be more interesting.

Bergman: Perhaps more interesting, but not to me. No, because Forman has an approach to human beings.

Simon: There's something a little primitive about him.

Bergman: Yes, I like that very much.

Simon: What about Bellocchio? Have you seen China Is Near?

Bergman: Terrible, terrible, very homosexual, very artificial, aggressive in a very empty way.

Simon: What about the early Truffaut? Did you like those first ones?

Bergman: Very much; very, very much.

Simon: What's happened to this man?

Bergman: He wants to make money; it's a very human desire. He wants a comfortable life. He wants to make money and he wants people to see his pictures.

Simon: Well, don't you think his early films were seen by people?

Bergman: But perhaps not by enough, and he didn't make enough money, and he likes the comfortable life of the modern film-maker.

Simon: But the trouble is his new films are not going to make much money.

Bergman: Then he made a mistake. Because if you lose both the money and your dignity, then it must be a mistake.

Simon: What about Bresson? How do you feel about him?

Bergman: Oh, Mouchette! I loved it, I loved it! But Balthazar was so boring, I slept through it.

Simon: I liked Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and A Man Escaped, but I would say The Diary of a Country Priest is the best one.

Bergman: I have seen it four or five times and could see it again...and Mouchette...really...

Simon: That film doesn't do anything for me.

Bergman: No? You see, now I'll tell you something about Mouchette. It starts with a friend who sees the girl sitting and crying, and Mouchette says to the camera, how shall people go on living without me, that's all. Then you see the main titles. The whole picture is about that. She's a saint and she takes everything upon herself, inside her, everything that happens around her. That makes such an enormous difference, that such people live among us. I don't believe in another life, but I do think that some people are more holy than others and make life a little bit easier to endure, more bearable. And she is one, a very, very simple one, and when she has assumed the difficulties of other human beings, she drowns herself in a stream. That is my feeling, but this Balthazar, I didn't understand a word of it, it was so completely boring.

Simon: You could almost say the same thing about the donkey, that when the donkey has taken on other people's suffering...

Bergman: A donkey, to me, is completely uninteresting, but a human being is always interesting.

Simon: Do you like animals in general?

Bergman: No, not very much. I have a completely natural aversion for them. Have you seen this picture Il Porcile (Pigpen)?

Simon: Yes, terrible. I think Pasolini is awful altogether.

Bergman: Yes, awful, awful. Meaningless. Completely.

Simon: There was a period in your life and work when the question of God was all-important, but not any more, surely?

Bergman: No, it's past. Things are difficult enough without God. They were much more difficult when I had to put God into it. But now it's finished, definitely, and I'm happy about it.

Simon: In an interview, discussing Hour of the Wolf, you said that you believed in demons; but how can you not believe in God, yet believe in demons? Aren't the two things connected? Can one have the one without the other?

Bergman: Well, if I say I believe in demons, of course, it is just a little joke. You sort of want to name things....

Simon: Things that bother you?

Bergman: Yes, of course. Yet it's not exactly a joke, because when I was younger, not very much younger, say, five, six, ten years ago, and back into my childhood, I was haunted by extremely terrible dreams, sometimes daydreams; sometimes things happened to me in a very, very strange, mysterious, and dangerous way, and I was very scared, and sometimes my dreams were so real that when I tried to remember something, I didn't know exactly if it had happened in reality or if I had dreamed it. It was very painful; but now it has disappeared—all of those things.

Simon: Why do you think it went away?

Bergman: I grew up. I worked a lot; I was director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre for three years. I started in the morning at eight o'clock and was there until eleven at night; then I went home and slept. I was at it ten months a year and there was no place left for demons and dreams. Then I went to my island; I have lived there four years. On the island, reality is so real, it's no place for demons and bad dreams. Instead of bad dreams, I now have very ridiculous ones, comical dreams—I often laugh.

Simon: Can you use those dreams in your work?

Bergman: Perhaps, I don't know. It doesn't interest me any more. To me reality is very real now, and other human beings.

Simon: More important than dreams?

Bergman: Yes, exactly, and if you have difficulty with your relationships with other people and reality around you, it is a place for demons; but if you are in contact with yourself and other people and reality, there's no room for dreams.

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