Have you seen the film?

 

Oh, the longer part! Then you’re an expert; you know everything. [laughs] As I mentioned, I’m a journalist at Swedish Television. I met Ingmar for the first time in 1983. He was having a press conference because he has spent five or six years in Germany, and he was then coming back to Sweden. That’s why he had this press conference. [I was] so nervous, I tried to move out of this interview. It’s like ‘Send someone else! Send someone else!’ I thought it was terrible to meet Ingmar Bergman, because he was known to be angry and hard. But… he was friendly from the beginning.

 

Yea, wasn’t he? But I think he was more angry when he was younger, actually. I got to know the old man, and old men are always kinder, aren’t they? [laughs]

 

In 1997, I was the presenter of a weekly culture magazine, and I had a longer interview with him [after the 1983 one]. We both found that it was very easy to spend time together, and to talk. He phoned me after the interview and he was very satisfied. So then I started to think about this possibility to make a documentary [as a portrait] of his life and art. But as you know it took me many years to convince him to let me do it, and when he finally said yes, it was when he had decided to leave his profession alive. When he started to shoot Saraband [Bergman’s last film], that’s when I started to follow him.

 

Yes, he’s decided that. To force himself to quit, he left his apartment in Stockholm where he had been living for 35 years. And he left his room at the Royal Dramatic Theatre for 40 years.

 

Yes, right. So you saw the theatre part [of the 3-hour cut] too! I’m glad.

 

Hmm, it’s so fantastic to hear. To me he’s very Swedish, so… [laughs]

 

Yes, because the questions are universal. The question of life, and death, and faith, and love, and everything.

 

I think you could say it’s 1997, after this longer interview. Then I started all the research – I had already seen most of his films – but I started to watch them over again, and I read everything that he has written, and everything written about him. And I searched all the archives, and all the newspaper clips. And most [important] of all, I started to persuade him to say yes. For a couple of years, we would meet every week or every second week to have a cup of tea together, because, he said, ‘I have to get to know you before I say yes.’ [laughs]

 

The shooting started when he started to shoot Saraband in 2003. He had already done his last stage production then. And then I followed him to Fårö [Island of Sweden, on which Bergman lived]. That was the most particular part, because he had never really let any journalist or anyone from the media there before.

 

That was the idea of Ingmar. He knew that if I was to do only one part, there wouldn’t be much about theatre, because it’s not as interesting for the international audience. But then when the film came out on international distribution, the distributor chose to show only two parts anyway: the film part and the Fårö part. And that’s why we decided to edit it into one, and take at least a little about the theatre into this. To Ingmar, the theatre is actually more important than the cinema. He said sometime in the 50s that ‘film is my mistress, and theatre is my faithful wife’. He was probably joking, but it was true in a way. He always went back to the theatre.

 

[Laughs] No, no, no, no, no. That was really theatre, and he was so satisfied we did that.

 

It was his idea, of course. And he said, ‘Marie, why don’t we take some flour and put on it?’ And he had this little box from a neighbour.

 

Yea, it’s very funny. [laughs] It’s childish in a way. Everyone knew that he’s just pretending. [laughs]

 

In a way, the shooting of this film was more like a beginning of something. Because after that, we developed a friendship on a personal basis. And that was very enriching for me too, to have someone who really cared. I mean, he used to call at least twice a week, and we talked for like a couple of hours every time.

 

Yea, sure he had a phone. [laughs] And it was actually his way to keep in touch with people, because he didn’t see many. In the summer of 2006 – that was his last good year, because he died a year later – I stayed with him for three weeks, because his housekeeper got ill. So I was his housekeeper. It was such a beautiful summer in Sweden – you know, summer in Sweden can be really rainy and grey. But that one was marvelous.

 

[In that summer], the director Ang Lee came to Sweden, and I arranged a meeting between the two of them. Ang Lee came to Fårö because he admired Ingmar, but everyone said, please don’t come to meet him – because he doesn’t meet anyone. On this island Andrei Tarkovsky and Woody Allen had been standing, they didn’t meet Ingmar Bergman because he refused. But, eh, since I was his housekeeper I spent the dinner talking him into this meeting. And they met, and they talked for maybe 20 minutes. And Ang Lee told Ingmar how The Virgin Spring almost changed his life when he saw it back in Taipei. It was very moving. After the meeting, Ang Lee sat there silent for maybe five minutes; and Ingmar gave him a big hug. And Ang Lee said, ‘[in a lowered tone] I heard his heart beat!’ [laughs]

 

They did meet, in New York I think, but not on the island.

 

I think the thing that I always come back to is his recipe when he’s scared or sad. He said it in the film too, he said, like, ‘demons like cold feet; if you stay in your bed, they’re going to hit you. So just go out and start doing whatever you’re afraid of.’ I think that’s a very useful advice.

 

Oh yes, it’s certainly true. But he’s telling it as a joke, more or less. But it’s true, he’s afraid of everything. What I find very charming with that scene is that he is very childish… I know so many giant boys who’re making lists of everything, of guitar players or football players. And he’s making a list of his demons. [laughs]

 

He was very organized, he was very fond of talking, and he was extremely interested in classical music. He tried to teach me about opera when I was there – it was not so successful. I tried to teach him to use a computer – and I didn’t succeed either. [laughs]

 

He had, but he didn’t use it. He didn’t even use the DVDs, he preferred the old VHS cassettes.

 

In his cinema, he has a real projector that can play both 16mm and 35mm film.

 

He watched everything, actually. He loved the old, silent movies; he had a collection of maybe a thousand of them in his library. 

 

Yea, he wanted to see everything, and he saw every Swedish movie. [For example,] he appreciated Lukas Moodysson. You know, the Swedish film distributors were very kind to him, because they sent all their films to him. So he saw almost everything that you could see in the cinemas of Sweden.

 

Oh no, not at all. Everything that’s shown in Sweden, and unfortunately mostly American films.

 

Yea, he did. He liked Clint Eastwood, and Julia Roberts, and Nicole Kidman. And he liked all the beautiful women, of course. [laughs]

 

Bergman Island screens on Apr 18 and May 2 as part of the HKIFF, and is set for a Region 1 DVD release by the Criterion Collection on Jun 19.