Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman; 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer who worked in film, television, and theatre. He is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential auteurs of all time and is most famous for films such as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, Cries and Whispersand Fanny and Alexander...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth14 July 1918
CityUppsala, Sweden
CountrySweden
Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.
Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness.
I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
The older I become, the more I think about my mother.
The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased making films, and Steven Soderbergh - they all have something to say, they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and Magnolia.
I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.
The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly, exacting mistress.
Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death — this infantile fixation of mine — was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry — with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.
There are moments when I can wander through my childhood's landscape, through rooms long ago, remember how they were furnished, where the pictures hung on the walls, the way the light fell. It's like a film - little scraps of a film, which I set running and which I can reconstruct to the last detail - except their smell.
Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure...
One has to manage alone as best one can. (Karin Bergman)
Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.