"There is always a certain amount of anxiety in working for Ingmar because he creates an undefineable mood in the studio, an uncertainty that is good for you and is productive, for you know also that you can trust him completely."



"Ingmar Bergman is a young artist but so experienced, so sure about details, so calm and convincing. Every time I work with him I become more and more impressed."



"The content in the films is all his own but the role you get can often be a shading of yourself. That's why one gets so tangled up privately in his films. The role settles in your marrow. Just like an invisible poison."



"Unfortunately it's not so funny as I intended it to be. The actor who was the big comic role was so drunk all the time he couldn't remember his lines or what he had to do. So about a third of his part had to be cut, which meant that the film lost its balance and became too serious."



"Those were the days when I was at Malmö City Theatre, and it was important to keep the ensemble together, so I went about promising everyone parts in my next film, even though I hadn't the faintest idea what I was going to make, and in the end had tremendous problems how to put it all together! In the end it had to be a picture in the round with masses of people in it. I fany my entire Malmö ensemble must have been in The Face."


"The actual focal point of the story is, of course, the androgynous Aman/Manda. It is around her and her enigmatic personality that everything rotates. Manda represents the belief in the holiness of human beings. Vogler, on the other hand, has given up. He is involved in the cheapest kind of theatre, and she knows it. Manda is very open in her talk with Vergérus. The miracle happened once, and she herself carries it. She loves Vogler in spite of being fully aware that he has lost his faith. If Vogler is a magician, who, even though he is tired to death, keeps repeating his by now meaningless hocus-pocus, then Tubal is the exploiter, the salesman of art. Tubal is Bergman, the director, trying to convince Dymling, the head of the studio, of the usefulness and quality of his latest film. In front of extremely skeptical studio executives, I managed to sell The Magician as a hell of an erotic comedy."


"The Magician was created in an atmosphere of high spirits despite the black components in the tale we were spinning. Most certainly this had to do with the feeling of camaraderie in our troupe of jesters, for such we were during our Malmö period. Later, when I repeated themes from The Magician in The Rite, they took on a totally different and much more rancid note."


"The film is a metaphor for the artist and all the parts that the audience projects into the artist. It is—or rather was—Bergman's own situation, for the audience projected all their fantasies into him, and he became an extremely interesting and fascinating individual. This goes for rock musicians, movie stars and others like them."