Original subtitles

[hymn playing]

[chorus singing in Latin]

[woman, in German]

[in Swedish]

[woman narrating in German]

[in Swedish]

[man, in Swedish]

[classical music plays]

-[Bergman, indistinct] -[actors chattering]

[man, in Italian]

[in English] You remember? That was in Venice, in '81.

1981, when I got the Golden Lion.

But you gave me the award.

That was as if Ingmar, the master of me,

stand behind you and he blessed me,

and you were the messenger for me.

I look like a messenger because I have faded somewhat.

We look different than these on the red carpet today.

-They are models, and I think the way-- -Yeah.

We look like two happy girls.

Yeah, absolutely. Happy girls.

But you were only seven years an actress?

Yeah, because it was not my-- my aim.

I wanted to become a director.

[laughter]

I don't know how old I was when I saw Gycklarnas afton,

but it made an incredible impression on me.

A group of people, and they happen to be men, who are sitting there,

on the mountain, watching,

and the women swimming.

No one has done that to me before,

allowing me to see how easy it is to be in power,

being on top, being in a flock,

and some of them are leaders, and to be humiliated.

[no audible dialogue]

[Ullmann, in Swedish]

[in English] I understood everything,

and I wondered about the man who had made it.

[no audible dialogue]

I was doing a movie in '62 with Bibi Andersson.

There was no hotel, and so where we did the movie--

So Bibi and I, we shared a classroom.

And then she got a letter from Ingmar Bergman while she was there.

And she talked to me about Ingmar.

She told me about the human being which was Ingmar.

And I asked and asked, and she told and told.

I met him on the street. I visited Bibi in Sweden.

And he stopped and he talked with Bibi.

And he knew who I was, because I had been an actress and done some films.

-And he talked to her and he looked at me. -At you... Ah.

And then he said-- And that was the beginning.

That was the beginning because suddenly he said,

"Would you like to be in a movie with me?"

I said, "Yes."

And he left, and Bibi said, "I never heard him say that before."

[von Trotta] When I saw Persona--

You said somewhere you knew that you were him.

It was like in a mirror. He looked in a mirror and he saw your face.

[Ullmann] He said he was inspired

by a picture of Bibi and a picture of me

and our alikeness.

From the first time I came to the studio,

I knew the way he looked at me that he knew...

-I understood him. -Him.

I was him in Persona.

I think Max von Sydow was Ingmar during Hour of the Wolf.

[in Swedish]

[Ullmann] Max was very much what Ingmar was struggling with

and getting more free from.

[stammers]

[in German]

[Ullmann] Where Ingmar was fantastic--

In every film I did,

he stood so close to the camera-- very, very close--

and he was the best audience.

I never knew what he would have done or what he was thinking,

but I knew everything I do now is seen by him.

He says, "I've given you the script.

You read the script. You have to understand the script."

And he gave you wonderful blocking.

"You sit for the three sentences,

then you get up and then you go over to that chair

and you stand by the chair and then you sit down there.

You have read the script. You, the actor.

You feel it, if you have understood it,

and allow me, the director, to see that you have understood."

And then he asked me again and he asked me again...

I know, I know. You did ten films with him.

I think I did eleven. Oh.

[murmuring]

[in Swedish]

[Ullmann] When they are adapting all his movies on the stage,

that would be the best that ever happened to Ingmar,

because one thing he always wished

was that they would really regard him highly for being a writer.

[von Trotta] Maybe he came in this house because Strindberg was living here once,

and he was so fond of Strindberg

that he was fond of the idea to live in the same house.

Maybe. But Ingmar,

he lived in and around

this part of Stockholm.

Most of his life. [von Trotta] Always in the same area?

[Björkman] Yes. Um...

After he was born,

he stayed with his parents about six, seven blocks away from here.

Mm-hmm.

[Björkman] And then they moved close to the church,

where his father was the parson.

[bell chiming]

[chiming continues]

This is the house where Ingmar lived

with his family and his brother and sister.

[von Trotta] Where is the Dramaten?

[Björkman] Dramaten is in that direction.

This was Ingmar's favorite restaurant.

He very often went here because it's very close to the theater

and he could have a meal for himself or invite somebody--

a friend, an actor, an actress.

He liked it because he could see the entrance,

and maybe a friend, an actress, or somebody might come in and...

As Ingmar was very curious, he wanted to know,

"Are they seeing somebody? Somebody I don't know?"

And he could check and see.

[woman, in English] It's absolutely impossible to think...

"What would I have become without him?"

When I met him, I had started rather strong.

We have so different backgrounds.

I mean, he's the son of a priest in very high society.

I was working-class and so on.

But he gave me a lot. Really.

Bergman always very carefully pointed out

where is the action, where is the motive,

where-- where should the public look now?

Not on those two persons,

because they are not, now, telling the story.

Look at that point, because there it happens.

And that's rather unusual.

Many directors put people on stage

and let the public decide.

[Björkman] There was a time

when everything was compared to Ingmar Bergman,

and you can never reach that kind of level as Ingmar Bergman.

I mean, we had some other fantastic film directors,

like Bo Widerberg.

And I think Bergman was a bit jealous

of Bo Widerberg and the attention he got.

It was like Widerberg started the Swedish nouvelle vague.

The kind of new language which Bo Widerberg had--

more improvisation, and he mixed nonactors with actors.

Ingmar was considered by many of us at that time,

maybe not by me, but by many of the newcomers,

as "Papas Kino."

Sjöstrom was, in a way, Ingmar's master,

and he always said, "At least once every summer,

I see The Phantom Carriage in my cinema."

So he must have seen it, like, 50 times.

And you can't make a more loving portrait of somebody you like

as Sjöstrom in Wild Strawberries, where he acted.

Films are dreams. They are in some way.

But he also uses dreams in so many of-- of his movies.

[water dripping]

Persona is a major work and very brave.

It starts with a young boy who sits up in a bed

and, with his hands,

he is kind of starting the story.

So it's like the-- a young filmmaker

giving us the story of Persona.

And it can be Ingmar Bergman

as a very young person also.

[in Swedish]

[von Trotta narrating in German]

[woman singing opera]

-[no audible dialogue] -[singing continues]

[music ends]

[in French]

[bell tolling]

[von Trotta, in French]

[man, in French]

[sighs]

[in French]

[train passing]

[chattering in Swedish]

[both laughing]

Whoo!

[chattering in Swedish]

[von Trotta, in English] I went around here already yesterday

to know a little bit what it's all about. Yeah.

Because it's the first time that I was here.

Right. And so I looked a little bit around,

what's in these books and so.

And what did I find? Yeah?

Come here. You'll see what I found.

Look at that. Yeah, right!

-And two! -Yeah.

Well, she has written, I think--

[von Trotta] With a wonderful dedication.

And you are the son; therefore I was very interested.

And also because I know that she was a great pianist.

Yeah.

And she helped him for Autumn Sonata, no? Yeah, yeah.

[no audible dialogue]

[chattering in Swedish]

[Daniel] It was a passion about--

[von Trotta] More about music than about real love?

Yeah, exactly. They were both narcissists and they were fond of their artistry,

each one of them.

And so they came up for... Yeah, yeah.

With the help of music,

they started to love each other. Yeah, yeah.

But that's a good reason. Music is... [coughing]

[piano]

[Daniel] I think children was a manifest for the love with a woman.

He said to the ladies when they were pregnant,

"Now I know you love me." And then he left them.

So it was more or less a way of controlling them.

We sat here at this table,

and I wrote my story and he wrote his story.

And we had lunch together,

and we talked about what we were writing.

And he said, "There is a story in The Magic Lantern

that could be a film."

And I said, "Yes, I think so too.

There is this bicycle story when you go on a tour

with my grandfather

to the church."

[bells pealing]

And he said, "Exactly. That's what I mean."

I said, "Yeah, fine. I think there's a film.

But for me, it's a short film. I can do it when you're dead.

And I'll do it then." Uh...

And he said, "No, I have a better idea.

We do it now. We do it together. I write the script and you direct it."

There's a red line between my grandfather, my father, and me.

So I could see the same movements:

aggression, hatred,

love, and contradictions, and...

But it became a conflict between me and Ingmar also,

because there is a black line in the story

where he tells his father, when his father is old,

reading the dead wife's diaries

and trying his 50-year-old son

to help-- to help him to understand things from his life.

He suddenly realizes that--

"I never knew the woman I was married to for 50 years.

Maybe I have lived wrong," he says.

And then he's old and he's vulnerable and he's weak,

and his son just goes,

"I don't come to hear about emotional blackmail."

[in Swedish]

And Ingmar wanted this scene out already in the script,

and I said, "No, this scene has to be there.

It's one of the main scenes."

Then in the editing, when he saw the first editing,

he said, "The film is just brilliant. It's just one thing."

"What is it?" "This scene must go out.

And you take it out now."

And we sat at the editing table.

And I said, "No, I don't take it out. What do you mean?"

"You take it out now. There's nothing to discuss. You just take it out.

If you don't do it, I take the film."

And I said, "If you want a war, you will have a war."

"What kind of war are you talking about?

What tools do you have for a war?"

"You will be aware," I said.

And then he suddenly started to cry.

And he lost it completely.

And I started to cry and I tried to hold him--

Oh, my God, what a scene! ...and he pushed me away

because he couldn't stand emotions in that way.

And then he said, "Okay, Daniel. In a way, I like this.

You do what you do, and I will never, ever look at this film again.

I will never see it again."

[von Trotta] I thought about it,

that he always was much closer to his own childhood than to his own children.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because he was so much wanting

to be himself a child,

so he couldn't care so much about his own children.

He was still a child during his whole life.

Absolutely. This with the childhood is interesting because Ingmar also said--

When Ingrid, his last wife, got cancer and was about to die,

he wrote in his diaries,

"It's amazing that this old man has to get out of the child chamber now.

It's very cruel."

He felt pity for himself that he has to leave the child room.

He has always been playing in his cabinet with all the tools and just having fun.

[in Swedish]

[laughs]

And that's what I wonder so much. Why is it so difficult?

If you have such a good relation to your own childhood

or understanding for your own childhood,

why can't you understand your own child?

[in Swedish]

[Daniel] He did a film called Daniel,

about myself when I was a child.

There's a need to get into, understand the child, but he didn't reach it.

He can do a film about it, but he can't reach it himself.

There is a certain kind of love,

but there is also some kind of opposite.

And the strange thing is that,

since he died-- [clears throat]

...I have never felt I miss him.

Not for one single minute.

And I go to the church and I light a candle on his grave.

And often I think that--

Because my mother is also dead,

and it's so strange that I don't miss them, you see.

Nor...? No, none of them.

And I never call them by "Mother" and "Father."

I call them "Ingmar" and "Käbi."

And I'm thinking a lot with my own child, Judith, who is now nine,

what love is, what I feel for her.

And that it would be unbearable if I felt the same for my parents--

If she would feel the same for me, it would be terrible.

You should never trust Ingmar's stories because they were always, uh...

Sometimes they are true and sometimes not.

One side was true, but the other side was true too. So you could never...

And in the film Fanny and Alexander, the pastor versus the child,

he says, "The truth. You have to tell the truth.

And if you don't tell the truth, you get a punishment."

And on the other hand, the child tells the truth,

but the priest can't stand it.

[in Swedish]

Just a few years before he died, one of my sisters sat here on the sofa

and Ingmar sat here.

And he said-- He felt sorry for himself, and he said,

"Well, I miss the actors. I miss the actors."

And she went, "How would it be if you just for one single second said,

‘I miss my children,' or ‘I miss my grandchildren'?"

Oh, my God. And he looked at her,

-"But I don't." -[both laughing]

I don't want to judge them. They do it as good as they can,

but being a parent and being an artist--

That's what my mother always-- also said very cleverly in interviews she did.

She said, "Well, it doesn't fit together."

You are already there. Okay. Already?

[speaking Swedish]

This is my favorite brother. Really?

Yeah, because he was a pilot,

and I was doing films and I...

[laughing]

I felt this is a real job he has.

Yeah, that is a real one, and-- He used to...

I didn't meet Daniel first time until we came here in 1978.

I think that was the first time we met actually.

Yeah, for the 60th birthday.

[Daniel] It was the decision from Ingrid that,

"Now when you get 60, you need to collect all the kids together."

And I think it was a way for Ingrid to get also her children to come,

because they were not allowed before.

So what happened was

that loads of sisters and brothers suddenly appeared here

which I never saw before.

Yeah, same with me.

[woman, in English] It was the last day of school.

They came in a big car from the studio, and the driver came out and said,

"Come on. You have to go to the studio.

No lunch." So I went out

and I met the head of the studio,

and he said, "This year, you have to work with Ingmar Bergman."

And I said, "Why me?"

And he said, "Because nobody else wants to."

The word was that he threw script girls and assistant cameramen

out through the door all the time.

And I met him finally with the head of the studio,

and he said, "This is your new script girl."

And they also said to me,

"If he stares at you, stare back.

If he spits at you, spit back."

So he looked at me and I stared back, and then he started to laugh

and he said, "It'll be all right." And he left.

And then you stuck together for-for--

For 30 years.

He had a method, and that was--

Don't argue with the actors, don't shout at them,

don't make quarrels with the actors.

And then he took somebody in the crew instead. [chuckles]

And the script girl was always sitting by the camera,

so he started to yell at me very often in the beginning.

And it was difficult because I didn't understand.

He never thought that he was good enough.

Which is quite interesting. So he didn't have that big ego.

So in the last films we did...

he came--

I saw the rushes at 7:30 in the morning.

And I came to the studio, and he was waiting.

With me and Sven Nykvist, we came together.

"Was it okay? Was it okay?"

It was the time when it was film. A laboratory took two days.

And, you know, this terrible thing today.

And so then we went up to his dressing room...

and no lamps, no nothing.

And we were sitting there for perhaps 20 minutes, half an hour,

holding hands.

Not saying much or perhaps, some days, nothing.

And at 8:30, I looked at the watch and said,

"Ingmar, you have to go down now."

[sighs deeply] ...he said,

put on his slippers and went down to the studio.

We were having a production meeting with Gunnel Lindblom, for a film.

It was the day before we went on location.

It was the last meeting here in Stockholm.

In the morning of that day, Ingmar called me and said,

"I want you to know I'm leaving today,

and I want you to know that before the evening papers come out."

So he left.

And I had to tell the crew and Gunnel,

"That's it. We'll do it ourselves."

[Bergman, in English] We rehearsed at the Royal Dramatic Theater.

We were in the big rehearsal room,

and then suddenly somebody come to me and said,

"The police is downstairs and want to talk to you."

And I said... Um...

I didn't-- I couldn't imagine.

So I said,

"Can't they wait until the lunch break? It's 20 minutes."

And then the man said,

"It's impossible. They won't go away."

Then I went down to the room of my secretary.

There were a policeman who said, "We have to take you to the station."

And I said, "Why?" And he said,

"It's about your tax-- your taxes."

And I said, "What happens? What has happened?"

I was completely confused.

I didn't-- hadn't the slightest idea

about what they asked me about.

[elevator chimes]

[buzzes]

[indistinct] But it's like in a prison here.

[man] He really did feel that he was cast out of Sweden.

Having voted

for the Swedish Social Democratic Party for a long time,

he now felt that they had betrayed him.

This is a shooting script for Das Schlangenei.

[von Trotta, in German]

[in English] And that is the sign that a scene is done?

[Holmberg] The scene is shot.

This is also interesting, I think, that he has a motto by Büchner.

[von Trotta] "Man is an abyss"...

[in German]

[Holmberg, in English] Bergman, he very seldom used research materials,

but in this film, he did.

So there are other pictures as well.

[von Trotta] And this street they tried then to reproduce.

Also Fassbinder, he used it.

Right. In Berlin Alexanderplatz, yes.

And it's called Bergmannstraße, isn't it?

Yes, yes, it was called Bergmannstraße for a long time.

[man, in English] Yes, here we have our street,

our Berlin streets, you remember...

[indistinct]

[chorus singing in German]

[von Trotta] The fear people could have in this time,

because Hitler was already trying to make a revolt, and that it was turned down.

But it goes from-- from the beginning, he wanted to get the power,

and in the end of the film it breaks down.

So we have still ten years of "non-Hitler time."

Right, right.

But that was a time where

everything could happen, and every violence could happen.

[all shouting]

When you see the situation of the main character,

who is followed always,

and he's going around in this police station,

he's like a prisoner. Yeah.

And he's going always behind the bars,

and you have this feeling that somebody is-- [gasps] is on the run.

He pointed out that very strongly in the film, this situation.

And this was his own situation at this moment.

Yes, exactly. Yes. This was a moment of deep crisis for him.

He had a psychological breakdown,

and he was admitted to a psychiatric ward.

He was heavily medicated. He contemplated suicide.

It was much more than just a legal case for him. He was--

Humiliated. Yes, extremely humiliated.

And humiliation for him was a main theme also in his films, no?

Yes. And I think when he felt betrayed, I mean, right or wrong,

but he did feel betrayed by the Swedish government and his home country,

he felt it as if he was deserted by his father, as it were.

Oh, yeah, his fatherland. We say also "fatherland." So, yeah.

And I'm certainly not comparing him

to refugees who are running from-- for their lives,

uh, but he did feel it like that, yes.

Yes, yes.

And of course calling it The Serpent's Egg

had something to do with another...

I hesitate to use the word, but in a way, a father figure,

uh, namely Adolf Hitler.

Ingmar Bergman had, as a young boy,

felt that Hitler was some kind of a savior,

and this was years before the war, so many people felt like this,

and Ingmar Bergman was one of them.

Many people in Sweden also. Yes, yes. Absolutely. Yes.

I hesitate to say that he would look up to Hitler as a father figure,

but, still, there is this notion of strong men

in Bergman's way of thinking.

And they are not necessarily all evil,

but they certainly have a capacity for evil.

At his absolute lowest, in 1976,

when the tax affair is most acute,

in his work diary, suddenly he writes,

"Wait a minute, I should be able to use this.

This is exactly what Abel, my character, should be feeling.

So I can take my own emotions now and try to write them down."

Whether he feels happy or depressed,

he can use that emotion

and, uh, and turn it into the emotions of one of his fictional characters.

[in German]

This is the workbook from 1976, and it says here,

"Känslorna." "The emotions."

And it ends up with him saying that,

"My confusion just has to stop.

If someone would come to me and say,

‘Now, Ingmar Bergman, we are taking from you everything you own,'

I would welcome this and feel it as a comfort.

In any case, a new period of my life is starting.

Where I'm going, I don't know. The next couple of months, we will see."

And then, what he did do was to go to Los Angeles.

But he says here, in the second of July, 1976,

that he has gone back to Fårö, because,

"I couldn't stay in Los Angeles.

I felt terrible there. It was all a mess."

And then he decided to go to Munich.

[in German]

[man, in German]

[chattering in German]

[woman, in German]

[Kaetzler]

[scoffs]

[Kaetzler]

[sobbing]

[Dohm]

[Dohm]

[in Swedish]

[Dohm]

[in Swedish]

[in German]

[Kaetzler]

[chattering]

[man, in German]

[man, in English] From the Life of the Marionettes --

It's a little bit a forgotten film of Ingmar.

And I think it's one of his most interesting

and brave films.

It's very experimental.

It's a kind of dream sequence

where they are in a white light, the two main characters,

and it's a very long, very sensual scene.

So he experimented with a black-and-white film also very much.

Then the rest of the film is like interrogations

with the different persons,

and it's also in chapters, which is interesting.

So we see the same story

through many different eyes and perspectives.

It's very seldom that Ingmar has had a gay person in his films.

[speaking German]

And here he is one of the principal characters.

He is showing this person, Tim, in a very,

uh, both sensitive and, um, delicate way.

[in German]

[in English] Everybody says that Bergman was fantastic with his actresses

and that he made so many beautiful portraits of women

in so many of his films.

And this image of Tim

has the same qualities as Bergman's portraits of women.

[von Trotta] You have the double face like always.

And when you look into the mirror,

you're another person than you are yourself, so...

It's always this double face.

So the heritage might be that a filmmaker who,

over the years, can, uh, change in attitudes,

in technique, in whatever,

and to experiment with a medium.

That's maybe one of his most important heritage.

[typing]

[in English] You have to watch one of my favorite YouTube clips.

It's a taxi driver that by accident ends up in a BBC news program.

The journalist thinks that this cabdriver is an expert on Internet rights.

And when she's introducing him,

the taxi driver realizes this is a horrible mistake.

[woman] ...the site News Wireless.

-Hello, good morning to you. -Good morning.

-[man, von Trotta laughing] -Were you surprised by this verdict today?

I'm very surprised to see... this verdict to come on me, because...

[laughing]

And I've tried so many-- in all of my movies

to capture that moment when someone is trying to avoid losing face.

Mm-hmm.

And I have never managed to do it in this strong way.

Yeah.

Bergman was still alive

when I was in the university,

so it was, like, a little bit that

he had to die before we started to watch his films a little bit.

Oh, yes.

But there's also a difference

between the film school in Gothenburg

and the one that is in Stockholm.

The one in Stockholm is more connected with Bergman.

The Gothenburg school was connected with Bo Widerberg,

and Bo Widerberg was an antagonist to Bergman in Sweden.

[von Trotta] Ah. Yeah.

So if Bo Widerberg had anything to do with you,

then you were on the opposite side of the industry than Bergman.

Of course, we watched many of his films.

But I think that, you know, since I'm brought up during the '70s,

I'm a director also that is on the paradigm change

of when film was analog to becoming digital.

And when it became digital,

like, this whole movement that happened in the industry

that also have happened with Internet and YouTube and so on...

I must say, if you look at the strongest images, moving images,

uh, for me the last 15 years, it's definitely on YouTube.

[chattering in Swedish]

[man]

[woman]

[man, woman]

One thing that's a little bit inspiring with him was that he...

For example, when he did Scenes from a Marriage,

that he was inspired of Dallas, you know, this TV soap series.

And that he had a way of combining, like, the art house cinema

with very commercial, American industry.

And he didn't see any problem with that.

He loved both of these sides of the moviemaking industry.

That is something that is maybe a little bit lacking today, you know,

that either you're very, very art house or you're moneymaking movie industry.

And in order to create, like, the new cinema that is exciting,

but at the same time is dealing with, like, a very important society topic,

I think we also have to learn something about that,

to not make genre art house movies.

Actually, step up, break free from that.

[sighs]

[Östlund] He was trusting his own instrument in a way

and what he said to himself,

"This is a very important topic, and now I will go straight into it."

And being as honest as possible.

Because I think he managed to do that with Scenes from a Marriage.

It's, like, really, really showing sides of himself that he's not proud of at all,

and that he dares to go there and actually can separate

what he's writing and what he's filming from himself

at the same time that being so honest to his own experiences.

[in Swedish]

[woman, in German]

[Russek, von Trotta laughing]

[von Trotta, Russek]

[von Trotta]

[giggles]

[Russek]

[exhales]

[gasping]

[in German]

[Russek]

[man, in English] He took pride in showing me films in his cinema.

We had to be really quiet

when we watched a film.

There was no talking, you know, no...

But laughing, yes. Laughing, of course.

And we could sleep also, if we wanted to.

That was no problem. But no talking, no interrupting the film.

He was going to screen Pearl Harbor,

but he didn't like the film so much, so we just watched the action sequences.

And every time the action sequences was finished,

he did like this to the machinist behind,

and she, you know, taped forward over the love sequences, which he hated.

[von Trotta laughing] And then we just watched Pearl Harbor,

just the action sequences.

He was not a film snob.

That was his idea, not mine.

He was also this fantastic storyteller.

He told a story about a witch who lived on the island,

and we used to run there and knock on the door and then run back.

And it was, like, in the guesthouse, where we used to live,

he painted, you know, a red line on the floor,

a really ugly red line on the floor,

and he wrote, "The blood of the witch."

It was integrated in the system of the whole island

that you could only visit his house and his library,

you know, between 11:00 and 3:00.

If you came 10:45, it was not okay.

If you came 3:15, it was not okay.

So, you know, he had these really strict rules

because he had the schedule when he was writing

and he was sleeping and he was, you know, thinking,

and he was really strict about his time.

I wanted him to be just my grandfather.

And I didn't see any of my grandmother's films

because I wanted them to be just my family and not this famous filmmaker.

It gives also a certain confidence

that I-- that I feel that, you know,

I'm not him, and I'm not going to be like him,

I'm not going to make the films like he did.

But he is-- He's inside of me in some, you know, way.

[woman, in French]

[in French]

[in Swedish] [machine buzzes]

[Hansen-Løve, in French]

[Bergman]

[boy] [Bergman]

[murmuring] [flute]

[girl gasps] [boy]

[Bergman] [boy repeats line]

[boy]

[flute]

[Bergman]

[murmuring]

[woman, in English] When I was young, I wanted to be an actress,

and I asked my mother each time I got home from school,

"Did Ingmar Bergman call today?" And she was like, "No, not today."

[von Trotta laughing]

So when he actually called me,

I thought it was a joke.

Then he told me he wrote this Saraband part for me and I said,

"Of course I want to be in that movie."

And he said, "Now you're not serious."

I was like, "What?"

"You have to read it first. You can't just say yes."

So I ran down to the theater,

got the script, and read it in 20 minutes or something.

And then I called him, "Now yes."

[both laughing]

I knew-- When I said yes to Saraband,

I knew that I say yes to be his instrument.

[in Swedish]

I will use my body and my soul, to do this piece that he wants it to be.

It's not my will here.

[exhales]

One day, I don't remember which scene it was, where it was like,

"Oh, God, I want to take away those lines.

It's too old-fashioned, but I can't tell him."

And then I went to-- to the studio,

and he said, "Julia, come."

And then he said, "Let's take away those lines."

It was like his intuition was brilliant. Oh!

Shh!

[in Swedish]

[Bergman]

[indistinct, laughing]

[sighs, murmurs]

[chattering, laughing]

[Assayas, in French]

[Dufvenius groaning]

[grunting]

[man grunts] [object clatters]

[guitar strings twang]

[in French]

[in Swedish]

[woman sniffs]

[sighs]

[Carrière, in French]

[no audible dialogue]

[discordant music]

[boy shouting]

[Carrière]

[drum vibrates]

[discordant music]

[Sjöstrom, in Swedish]

-[girl] -[Sjöstrom]

[laughing]

[Carrière]

[birds chirping]

[Carrière]

[harp plays slowly]

[Ullmann, in English] I was in Norway, and I knew.

"Ingmar, I think you're leaving."

And I took the airplane from Norway

and I came and they let me in, in the bedroom,

and there he was, and he was on his way.

I took his hand.

And I remember from Saraband, a scene there,

-where the person I played came to visit my ex-husband, -Mm-hmm.

and he says, "Why are you coming here?"

And she says, "You called for me."

[in Swedish]

[sighs]

[Russek]

[chuckles]

[strings play]

[inaudible]

[in Swedish]

[man, in Swedish]

[von Trotta, in English] I never think, when I'm doing a film,

"Oh, now that is like in Bergman,

and I have to take these, you know, moment

and steal it from him and put it in my film."

It happened, and people then see,

and they say, "Oh, but that's like Bergman."

And I didn't think about it.

It's-It's something you're living with.

And it comes up then unconsciously.

And that's-- I think it's the right way.

If you imitate, then it's over.

Maybe we need a couple of more years on Bergman

before we start to look back on him in a different way.

Now it's almost like, you know, it's an old relative that have passed away

that everybody is talking about all the time.

You never met him,

but you have to relate to him just because you're a Swede.

You know the Bergman stiftelsen as it's called, Stiftung,

they don't invite me because I'm on the other side

of the Swedish film industry.

I'm connected with Bo Widerberg and Roy Andersson.

So they never invite you. They will never invite me.

[laughs]

So that's so beautiful when someone comes from Germany

to interview me about Bergman.

That would never happen in Sweden, you know. [chuckling]

Margarethe, now you have to tell me,

which one is your favorite Bergman movie?

Oh, you know, well, it's not the favorite,

but it's the first one I saw, that was Seventh Seal.

So I saw it in Paris in the early '60s. You were not yet born.

[chuckles] So that was the time

when the nouvelle vague was discovering Bergman, you know?

Truffaut wrote a wonderful article about him,

and that was the moment he became famous in Europe.

Before, he just did his films in Sweden, but he-- Nobody knew him.

And that was like an explosion. Yeah?

And for me it was the first real film.

I went to theater, to concerts, and to exhibitions,

but film, or cinema, was not yet important for me.

And then I saw this film, and I knew I would like to do--

Once in my life, I would like to become a director.

[in Swedish]

[orchestral music]

[water lapping]

[orchestral music continues]

[orchestral music continues]