"I sense that my body doesn't want it anymore. Suddenly, toward evening, at four o'clock, I'm tired to death...."

Ingmar Bergman has talked frequently in recent years about the prospect of retiring from the onerous physical labour of filmmaking. Now, that prospect is about to become a reality; Bergman's next two films, he says, will definitely be his last.

In 1976, while Bergman was in the midst of a rehearsal, Swedish police took him into custody for questioning about alleged tax irregularities. The charges were subsequently dropped, bur the incident had a shattering effect on him. Three months later, he left Sweden for West Germany. "I can no longer live in a land where my honour is publicly and unjustly impugned," he declared.

The breach seems at last to have been healed. After nearly six years of self-imposed exile in West Germany, where his last three feature films have been produced, the eminent Scandinavian director has now come home to make Fanny and Alexander, the most ambitious film ever attempted in Sweden. It is a film that Bergman calls "a dream of life"—and it will, almost certainly, have more than a touch of the farewell gesture about it.

Our talk took place on a bright, sunny fall afternoon in Stockholm. Bergman, at 63, looked fit and rested after a summer at his beloved island retreat of Fårö. "Autumn is my season," he says. The conversation is relaxed. Bergman laughs often. In the small, comfortable screening room where we sit, the only wall decoration is a large framed photograph of Victor Sjöström as Professor Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries—a silent reminder of the greatness of the Bergman past. A reminder of the present is the silence and lack of bustle in the rooms and offices around us—a certain sign that all is in characteristic readiness for the arduous work that is to begin in three days' time.

SR: How much time will you spend rehearsing Fanny and Alexander?

BERGMAN: We don't rehearse at all. It's very dangerous to rehearse when you make a picture.

SR: So you'll begin the actual shooting on Monday?

BERGMAN: On Tuesday. It's very unwise to begin on a Monday, because some catastrophe always happens over the weekend. Then you have Monday to fix it. Besides, it's bad luck to begin anything on a Monday.

SR: It's said to be the most expensive Swedish film ever made.

BERGMAN: Yes, it's a huge project—150 actors—six months of shooting time. It's a Swedish family story that takes place at the beginning of the century. And it looks very beautiful, I must say. I love that period.

SR: It's hard to believe the news that this is to be your last major film. Do you really mean that?

BERGMAN: Oh, yes. Once Fanny and Alexander is finished, I'll make just one more film—a very experimental, controversial one. I wrote it last summer, and I think I'll have to rewrite it next summer. When that's over, I look forward to being lazy. Saying yes to my inner personality. Here inside me, you know, there's a very lazy man. He hasn't appeared yet, but he will appear!

SR: When you start shooting next week, you'll be directing in Swedish again. Is that a strange feeling after all this time?

BERGMAN: It's a nice feeling. It's a terrible thing to direct in a foreign language. After the first two years in Germany, I got used to it, and there weren't as many difficulties. But those first two years were terrible—directing A Dream Play and Three Sisters. The German period was good for me, though. It was a very good lesson to work with that sort of actor.

SR: What sort of actor do you mean?

BERGMAN: The German actors live without a sense of security, so they are much more aggressive and much more under stress. And they are much more aware of their profession—they're extremely professional—and also extremely impatient. That can be good in a way, though, because they always try to jump over their limits, to find new ways—the better ones do—and I like that very much. Here in Sweden everybody has his social security, and we are much more relaxed when we work. The quality of professional know-how isn't on the same level as in Germany. But the level of talent here is the same. I think it will be lovely to come back to Dramaten [the Royal Dramatic Theatre] to direct. I would love to return and work in my own language.

SR: You will never give up directing for the theatre, then?

BERGMAN: No, never. I hope I will have the chance to work in the theatre until they carry me out. Because that is a great joy to me. And besides, it's no strain. That is work for a lazybones.

SR: Is your decision to give up making films connected in any way with your artistic outlook? Years ago you made the point that art (and not only the art of the cinema) lacks importance—that it no longer serves the same purpose it perhaps once did.

BERGMAN: I don't think I have changed my mind about that. Art can have immense therapeutic value, but the time for art to be an agent of change, a force for reform, has passed. The other media have taken over that function. I make my films so people can use them, and then if somebody is able to understand something better, I feel I've made a good film. Art exists, you see, to console, to enlighten, to help, to shock—and it can go on doing all those things. But the assumption that art can bring us new ideas, fresh impulses—I haven't much confidence in that.

SR: Did that viewpoint enter into your decision to stop making films?

BERGMAN: No, no, no. Not at all. I never feel bitter or disappointed or anything like that—it's just a fact we must accept. Of course I enjoy making my pictures—I'm still obsessed by it. But I have seen too many directors who are tired inside and whose bodies are tired, too—seen them making picture after picture. I still have my vitality, I still have my curiosity, my obsession—and I want to stop before all that disappears. When you get to be 63, you have a leg that hurts, you have a bad stomach, you have an eye that doesn't function very well, you have a shoulder that hurts—you get to become a little bit of a ruin. You may laugh, but it's true.

You know, it's been two years now since I made a film. I made Marionettes two years ago; and four years ago I made Autumn Sonata; and five years ago I made Serpent's Egg. And I sense that my body doesn't want it anymore. Suddenly toward evening, at four o'clock, I'm tired to death, and I don't want to be that sort of....My body is tired and it hurts, and you realize these are signals, warnings to take it easy. For me, you see, film isn't just a spiritual matter. It isn't just a question of creativity and spiritual power alone. It's also to a great extent a physical matter. At least with the kind of craftsmanship I put into films. That is a great strain. It begins to be too much.

SR: Your decision to stop will leave a great many disappointed people behind.

BERGMAN: Yes, I know that. It's very curious. I have been making pictures for 40 years, and when I finish this next one, I will have made about 45 or 46 pictures. That is a great many. Naturally I'll go on making films for television, and I will find that very exciting. But a TV film isn't so difficult; it lasts about an hour, 50 minutes. That means a shooting time of two or three weeks, not a shooting time of six months.

SR: Fanny and Alexander is exceptional in that respect, though.

BERGMAN: Yes, it's exceptional—but even 40 or 50 shooting days is a very, very long time. More than two months. Whether you're rehearsing at the theatre or whether you're shooting a film, you know when you're good and when you're not good. And when you feel you aren't good at the theatre, it doesn't matter. You can say: I'm not good today, but perhaps I'll be better on Friday. But when you are aren't good in the studio you start to sweat, because you know that you're making about three minutes of the finished picture, the final result, every single day. That's a terrible feeling. One off day is all right, because you can remake it. But if you have two days or three days or five days like that, you start to have a sense of desperation. And that's no good for creativity.

I have the feeling that as long as I find my picture exciting to make, people will find it exciting to watch. The moment I'm too scared or too tired, you will see that in the picture—the picture will be scared and tired. That's how it is. In 1970 or so I made a picture that I hate—The Touch—and that's a very good example. That was a down period for me—there was nothing wrong with me, I just felt that this was a time to stop. I had made The Passion of Anna just prior to that, and it was a terrible film. I don't dislike The Passion: in a way I like that film very much, but I was very disappointed with it. I have the feeling that picture doesn't reach the audience, so there must be something wrong with it. Well, after that I made The Touch, and everything went wrong with that picture from the very first moment. I was tired to death and sad and unhappy while I was shooting it, and I said to myself, never again. I will never again make another film under those circumstances.

SR: Yet the curious thing is that during that very same period, in the early 1970s, you directed two of the best stage productions of your career—A Dream Play and The Wild Duck.

BERGMAN: That's the difference between working in the theatre and making a film. At the theatre you have your security, you can relax, you're surrounded by friends. That's why working in the theatre is, for me, a way of living—that's the best of all. It's not the result that matters most; it's the atmosphere that matters—the time we had together when we worked on tbe play. And if you are together with actors who share the same way of thinking, the same attitude toward their job, it's wonderful.

SR: Do you feel more isolated as a film director?

BERGMAN: Completely isolated. Directing a film, you always say we're one big family, we all love each other, we are together. And in a way that's true—but in another sense, you are totally isolated. There is the crew, over here are the actors, and here stands the director. And he makes all the decisions. He makes about 10,000 decisions every day, and he knows that 50 percent of those decisions will be bad ones. Only a very small percentage will be good decisions.

SR: And you can never tell that to the actors, can you?

BERGMAN: No.

SR: Of course, your own personal way of making a film puts an added strain on you, doesn't it? You wouldn't dream, for instance, of adopting the Hollywood system of leaving those decisions to someone else. Don't you want to make all the decisions yourself?

BERGMAN: Yes. My pictures are handmade, from beginning to end. I cannot rely—as other directors do—on assistants and assistants to the assistants. I do it all myself. We have been preparing this new film for about 10 months now. And everything, every tiny detail in that picture will be handmade. For me that is the only way.

SR: You couldn't conceive of directing in the other system?

BERGMAN: No. But in a way, you know, I must say I found the system at the Bavaria Studios in Munich very helpful when I was working there. They have routines—they're much more professional. Here in Sweden, we've lived too long in a film crisis. It becomes harder and harder for film production to survive financially. So, a period film that needs costumes, like this one, presents great difficulties. But the people working for me on sets and costumes are mostly young people; and they are absolutely wonderful because they have such—attack. They feel very involved in it. They love it, and they say: We will never again have a chance to make a picture in Sweden costing 30 million kroner.

In the old days, I always had the same crew, and they knew exactly how I wanted everything done. But now after all these years away, there are lots of new young people who have never worked together with me before. And sometimes they feel—"that old pedant!" Yes, they do, because they don't understand why I am so extremely precise. Because they haven't learned it, you see—they haven't experienced it before. But then when they reach results that are far beyond their own limitations, they are very surprised and very happy.

SR: How do you convince them, then? As a director of actors, you had the reputation in your younger days of being a terrible demon. Are you?

BERGMAN: No, no, no, not very much. But what scares them sometimes is that because I work on intuition, I know what they are thinking. I can see it. And that perhaps is what they somehow find demonic. And sometimes they hate me because I say to them: That isn't good, you can do better. Sometimes I have—what shall I call them—pedagogical explosions, and that makes them very aggressive. But sometimes it can be very good for them to become aggressive.

SR: Returning to your comments about the differences between working in theatre and working in film, one self-evident difference is that the finished film continues to exist. The theatre performance vanishes.

BERGMAN: Yes—and I like that very much. Once a work is finished, it's finished.

SR: Do you ever look at your old films, then?

BERGMAN: No, not very much. I think it's awful. Sometimes I can sit down alone, on Fårö, and put one of my pictures in the projector. I sit there looking at it just because I'm curious. And then I can say, that's good, or that's not so very good. When I'm absolutely alone.

SR: If that's so, why then do you publish all your screenplays?

BERGMAN: I never wanted to publish them; I was always against it. But a friend of mine convinced me. I saw that my screenplays disappeared—there are five or six scripts that have disappeared completely. So he said, "Why not publish them?" But in a way I dislike it.

SR: That seems understandable. The screenplay is by no means the finished work of art. But it does represent a very essential aspect of the creative process.

BERGMAN: It's a basis. It's a step on the way to the result.

SR: Several critics recently have begun to point out that the importance of Bergman's contribution as a dramatic author has been unjustly ignored. The screenplay in print reveals a great deal about the consummate dramaturgy of a Bergman film.

BERGMAN: Perhaps. But it's only a step on the way.

SR: Your own attitude toward your career as a filmmaker—has that been shaped by your sense of the meaninglessness of a work of art?

BERGMAN: The work is its own meaning. There is no meaning outside the work—as far as I'm concerned. The work has no meaning sub specie aeternitatis. I knew that very early in my career. I'm not a man of theories. I'm not very intellectual. But very early I discovered the practical way—my way—of thinking about my job. I felt it was some kind of craftsmanship. I make a chair, I make a table—and I'm very proud because I know my profession. That is the important thing. I think I know my profession very well. And that makes me feel happy.

Frederick J. Marker and his wife Lise-Lone Marker teach at the University of Toronto. Their book, Ingmar Bergman: Four Decades in the Theatre, was published by Cambridge University Press in December.