The publication by Les Cahiers du Cinéma of a book of interviews with Ingmar Bergman coincides with a festival of the Swedish director's films at the Cinémathèque Beaubourg. In this excerpt, Bergman talks about his two most recent films, Fanny and Alexander and After the Rehearsal. He discusses the technical side of filmmaking, his quarrels with producers and his feelings about artistic freedom. Interviews by Olivier Assayas and Stig Bjorkman.

When After the Rehearsal was released, it was assumed to be a kind of postscript to your career, because after Fanny and Alexander you had said that you would not make any more movies.

After the Rehearsal is very much about my attitude towards the stage and my relationship with this dirty, shady, cruel profession [of directing]. But it was a movie made strictly for television, and then the distributors did not keep their commitments and it ended up in the cinemas. I had never intended to make it for the cinema. It was a drama, made exclusively for television.

So you do not consider it to be a post-Fanny and Alexander film?

Absolutely not. I had even thought of doing it in video because if you shoot in video they can't distribute it for the cinema. But Sven (Sven Nykvist, who has been Bergman's cameraman since 1961) refused to do it and I wanted to work with him. He didn't feel at ease with video or with video lighting, so we did it in 16 millimetres.

Have you ever shot in video?

Afterwards, yes. A few films for television, and I must say that I don't like it much. Harriet [Andersson] once said to me: 'I don't like video because you can't hear the camera.' It's a lot of machines. The most fantastic thing about the camera and film is that, technically, it's exactly the same as it was in 1895 in Paris at the Grand Café. And you know, when they edit a video film, they're sitting in a kind of submarine and they do it like this and like that. You can't feel anything, you can't take the film out and touch it and look at it. Editing is something very erotic...Don't you think so?

Of course. And another thing with video is that you don't get the sharp, clean cuts. It's limp.

Exactly. They say that you can, but you can't. Obviously, this has to do with the whole system. (Pause). No, After the Rehearsal is not an epilogue to Fanny and Alexander, because Fanny and Alexander is an epilogue in itself. It's the end and that's that.

But it's a reflection on your work, your situation...

Yes, if you like.

For you, which is the definitive version of Fanny and Alexander? The first three-hour version, or the four-part TV version, or the five-hour movie made by joining the episodes of the TV series?

Yes, that's it.

The five-hour film?

Yes. Forget about the three-hour version! I think it's awful! But it was the only way that Fanny and Alexander could be made...the only way. The real Fanny and Alexander lasts more than five hours, five and a half hours. It wasn't made to be seen one hour one week and one hour the next week and so on. You have to see the film at one sitting, with a break for lunch or dinner. And obviously without the credit titles of the TV series. That one is the only acceptable version. I could have cut another 20 minutes or so because there are still some things I find a bit long...but the only way to get financing for the film was to work with the movie industry and to set up a television/cinema co-production. In my contract, I promised that the film would not be longer than two and a half hours.

It ended up lasting three hours...

You know, I was so sure of myself, pedant that I am, I had planned everything perfectly: 'I'll take out this bit, and this bit, and this bit, and it will take me a week to make my cinema version.' And then, when the editor came to Fårö (the island where Bergman works for part of the year and that can be seen in many of his films), we went to work on it in a cold, emotionless way. No problem. And when we finished, the film was still just over four hours! (Laughter.) That was when the big fight started. I had no choice but to start carving up the movie, it was terrible...

There was no way of convincing them...

No. When I said, 'There it is, it's three hours and 12 minutes and that's all I can do. I can't take out any more,' the distributors were furious. I said, 'Please, if you want to cut, cut...the contract says two and a half hours, there's nothing I can say about that, but in that case I'll withdraw my name.' It was very hard. Not here in Sweden—the people were extremely kind and understanding. But in the other countries—my God—in France...Gaumont...Toscan du Plantier—no, he was already gone—but his successors...

That was very unfair to the movie, because even if it was appreciated and admired it was not recognized as the masterpiece it is. All the press had seen the first short version and very few journalists went to see the complete version a few months later.

The short version has no rhythm. It lost it completely...

Fanny and Alexander sums up many things that are present in all of your films. In some respects, it is like a kind of reconciliation (...) There are happy, peaceful parts, and there are also some very strange, enigmatic, very daring things, especially where the supernatural comes into it—for instance when Jacobi comes and takes the children away. It's really well done, and at the same time it's very daring.

Actually it's very simple.

It's very different from everything else you'd ever done.

It's like the scene with the chair. You think that the children are in a trunk, but they are also in the nursery. How did they get from the nursery to the trunk? I say that they did! I'm allowed to do that! I said it and it's the truth. It's not very complicated. But you've got to come up with the idea.

It's very simple and very impressive, but the fact that one believes it is even more impressive...

If I say: 'Now they're in the nursery and at the same time they're in the trunk,' that's the way it is. That's one of the privileges of being an old, experienced director.

But there's that other very strange scene with Ismael, and the relationship that you establish between the mummy in Jacobi's house and the bed-ridden old aunt in Vergerus' house...What is the nature of this relationship?

Whatever you like. There is a relationship, but this relationship is of no interest. The only thing that is of any interest is that you think there is one.

With the short version, one was deprived of this pause for reflection.

That made me very, very unhappy.

I spoke of the boldness of this passage because it occurs in a film where, up to that moment, everything seems very clear. The characters are what they appear to be, and even the supernatural elements are seen through the eyes of a child. Alexander has visions, but they are the visions that all children have. Then, all of a sudden, without allowing him to distance himself from it at all, you take the viewer and lead him very far into the supernatural.

When one is an artist, when one creates films, it is very important not to be rational. One must be irrational. If you are rational, then beauty escapes you and disappears from your work. Where emotions are concerned, you must be coherent. You cannot be otherwise. But if you trust your own emotions, if you have faith in your creative imagination, then you can be completely irrational. It doesn't matter. Because you have the power to seize the consequences of your emotions. Forever.