Bergman Ingmar Quotes & Sayings

In Woody Allen movies people stood in line for Ingmar Bergman films or Holocaust documentaries talking up media theory to pass the time. At 16 that was my idea of fun. Now that I live in New York I can tell you that people lined up for tickets don't debate theory. They talk about cute guys at the gym or whether or not they live within walking distance of a Krispy Kreme. I was such a young fogy that growing up involved becoming less mature. — Sarah Vowell

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. — Ingmar Bergman

My basic view of things is - not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer. — Ingmar Bergman

The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there's plenty of anger left. — Ingmar Bergman

You know I feel such tenderness for you. It's difficult to bear. I don't know what to do with my tenderness. — Ingmar Bergman

I have always appreciated the honest brutality of the international film world. One need never doubt one's worth in the market. Mine was zero. — Ingmar Bergman

All of us collect fortunes when we are children. A fortune of colors, of lights, and darkness, of movement, of tensions. Some of us have the fantastic chance to go back to his fortune when grown up. — Ingmar Bergman

I draw on a lot of cinematic influences like Ingmar Bergman and Wim Wenders, artists who let a story take its time. Comics are a visual medium, and visuals should be allowed to tell some of that story. — Jeff Lemire

Sometimes I work on film sets. I've done this for 40 years. I always wanted to photograph on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity. — Mary Ellen Mark

When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence. — Ingmar Bergman

Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity. — Ingmar Bergman

In Bergman's world I represented a sort of intellectual, skeptical, ironic person, rather cold and frustrated. When I went abroad and made films in Italy and other places, I was used in different ways. I was rather often cast as crazy people, maniacs. It was very good for me and it was fun because it is nice to play crazy people if you are not in reality. And I think perhaps that changed how Ingmar saw me. Suddenly I was on the more magical side of his world, playing the people with fantasies, variety, the artists. — Erland Josephson

Necessary illusions enable us to live. — Ingmar Bergman

There is something joyous about not talking. — Ingmar Bergman

Aging is not uncomplicated. Creativity is an extraordinary help against destructive demons. — Ingmar Bergman

Occasionally I sense an insane wail deep down in the pit, the echo alone reaching me, striking without warning, a child weeping uninhibitedly, imprisoned forever. — Ingmar Bergman

The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. — Ingmar Bergman

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — Ingmar Bergman

This damned ranting about doom. Is that food for the minds of modern people? Do they really expect us to take them seriously? — Ingmar Bergman

I make all my decisions on intuition. — Ingmar Bergman

When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure - THE SERPENT'S EGG, THE TOUCH, FACE TO FACE and so on — Ingmar Bergman

A film causes me so many worries and such a lot of reactions that I have to love it in order to get over it and past it. — Ingmar Bergman

I supply my own angels and demons. I exist on a stony beach, which lowers itself in waves toward a protective ocean. A dog barks; a child cries; the day sinks and becomes night. You can never scare me. No human being will be able to scare me ever again. I have a prayer that I repeat to myself in absolute stillness: May a wind come to stir up the ocean and the stifling twilight. May a bird come from water out there and explode the silence with its call. — Ingmar Bergman

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, "I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there's something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it's not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It's not like I sit here philosophizing, because I've no talent for that. It's just this thing about silence that's so wonderful. — Ingmar Bergman

When you're as chaotic as I am, you need a very firm structure in your life. — Ingmar Bergman

I would have been happier if I'd been anonymous. — Ingmar Bergman

I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry ... and miserable. I think it's awful. — Ingmar Bergman

Now I want to make it plain that 'The Virgin Spring' must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa. — Ingmar Bergman

On a personal level, there are many people who have meant a great deal to me. My father and mother were certainly of vital importance, not only in themselves but because they created a world for me to revolt against. — Ingmar Bergman

I dream about doing a film about once a week. — Ingmar Bergman

When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world - profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence. — Ingmar Bergman

Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father. — Ingmar Bergman

Reality is perhaps not at all what I imagine. Perhaps it doesn't exist, in fact. Perhaps it only exists as a longing. — Ingmar Bergman

First, I write down all I know about the story, at length and in detail. Then I sink the iceberg and let some of it float up just a little. — Ingmar Bergman

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought - or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain ... — Ingmar Bergman

I've never felt Truth was Beauty. Never. I've always felt that people can't take too much reality. I like being in Ingmar Bergman's world. Or in Louis Armstrong's world. Or in the world of the New York Knicks. Because it's not this world. You spend your whole life searching for a way out. You just get an overdose of reality, you know, and it's a terrible thing. I'm always fighting against reality. — Woody Allen

I'd prostitute my talents if it would further my cause, steal if there was no way out, killing my friends or anyone else if it would help my art. — Ingmar Bergman

I think I'm Swedish because I like to live here on this island. You can't imagine the loneliness and isolation in this country. In that way, I'm very Swedish - I don't dislike to be alone. — Ingmar Bergman

Actually it deals ("as usual" I was about to say!) with Life, Love and Death. Because nothing in fact is more important. To occupy oneself with. To think of. To worry over. To be happy about. And so on. — Ingmar Bergman

There is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. — Ingmar Bergman

In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I. — Ingmar Bergman

I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing. — Ingmar Bergman

Perhaps we are the same person. Perhaps we have no limits; perhaps we flow into each other, stream through each other, boundlessly and magnificently. You bear terrible thoughts; it is almost painful to be near you. At the same time it is enticing. Do you know why? — Ingmar Bergman

I have such difficulty calming down - my stomach, my head, reality, everything. That is the reason I live in Faro. — Ingmar Bergman

[Akiro] Kurosawa, no doubt, was a big influence. Movies sometimes more than directors have influenced me: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Ford, was an extraordinary discovery. Sergei Eisenstein, of course. Later on, [Ingmar] Bergman. — Costa-Gavras

When I'm on Faro, I'm never lonely. — Ingmar Bergman

Today the individual has become the highest form, and the greatest bane, of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny each other's existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. — Ingmar Bergman

Either I did away with that fear through writing, or in the course of writing, I discovered it was no longer so intrusive or threating. The bottom line is, it's gone. — Ingmar Bergman

To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe. — Ingmar Bergman

I think Ingmar Bergman, Francoise Truffaut - all these people created images in my mind, beautiful pictures, I loved what was known at that time as the foreign film. — Jackie DeShannon

The film medium is some sort of magic. I think also it's a magic that every frame comes and stands still for a fraction of a second and then it darkens. A half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic. — Ingmar Bergman

Growing older is like climbing a mountain: the higher you get, the more strength you need, but the further you see. — Ingmar Bergman

If I didn't have my profession, I think I would be sitting in a nuthouse. But I have been unceasingly at work, and this has been very healthy for me. So I had no need for therapy. — Ingmar Bergman

I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to man has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams. — Ingmar Bergman

I was a very unpleasant young man. If I met the young Ingmar today I'd say, 'You're very talented and I'll try to help you, but I don't want anything else to do with you. — Ingmar Bergman

A movie that I've seen probably the most is 'Fanny & Alexander,' the Ingmar Bergman movie. I even dragged my friends to the super long version that had an intermission. I don't know how much they liked me that day. — Gillian Jacobs

Then I felt that every inflection of my voice, every word in my mouth, was a lie, a play whose sole purpose was to cover emptiness and boredom. There was only one way I could avoid a state of despair and a breakdown. To be silent. And to reach behind the silence for clarity or at least try to collect the resources that might still be available to me. — Ingmar Bergman

I have a feeling of complete balance. The sea, the house, the loneliness, the light. Everything is clearer. Much more precise. I have the feeling that I am living on a limit, and I'm crossing that limit sometimes. — Ingmar Bergman

You never know when I'm lying. So it would be more practical to believe what I say
-Pauline in In the Presence of a Clown — Ingmar Bergman

The only thing I consider appalling would be to suddenly become a vegetable and a burden on other people. A soul slowly dying out, trapped in a body in which the insides gradually sabotage me - that, I think, would be terrifying. — Ingmar Bergman

The demons are innumerable, arrive at the most inappropriate times and create panic and terror ... but I have learned that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage ... Lilies often grow out of carcasses' arseholes. — Ingmar Bergman

Most screenplays, most motion pictures, owe much more to the screenplay. Ingmar Bergman has such an economy of language, so little language in his piece, it is so visual, his moods are introduced and buttressed by camera rather than by word or character. But again, that's unique. — Rod Serling

For me, in those days, the great question was: Does God exist? Or doesn't God exist? Can we, by an attitude of faith, attain to a sense of community and a better world? Or, if God doesn't exist, what do we do then? What does our world look like then? In none of this was there the least political colour. — Ingmar Bergman

When you finish a film, you never want to see it again. — Ingmar Bergman

I am autobiographical in the way a dream transforms experience and emotions all the time. — Ingmar Bergman

I feel very strongly that I'm surrounded by other realities. — Ingmar Bergman

I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don't like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done. — Ingmar Bergman

They said you were mentally healthy, but your madness is the worst — Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman had a great sense of humor, and he had a very special, characteristic laugh that you always recognized - if he went to watch a theater show, 'Ah! He is here tonight.' — Max Von Sydow

Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness. — Ingmar Bergman

Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your views become more extensive. — Ingmar Bergman

Me sitting down for dinner with Ingmar Bergman felt like a house painter sitting down with Picasso. — Woody Allen

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. — Ingmar Bergman

Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure ... — Ingmar Bergman

I have thus decided to make a certain film and now begins the complicated and difficult-to-master work. To transfer rhythms, moods, atmosphere, tensions, sequences, tones and scents into words and sentences in a readable or at least understandable script. This is difficult but not impossible. — Ingmar Bergman

I usually say I left puberty at 58. — Ingmar Bergman

I hope I never get so old I get religious. — Ingmar Bergman

Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric. — Ingmar Bergman

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images. — Ingmar Bergman

There are so many books I want to read. Difficult books. That's what I intend to do and what I'm longing for. — Ingmar Bergman

It's a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then. — Ingmar Bergman

Since Socrates and Plato first speculated on the nature of the human mind, serious thinkers through the ages - from Aristotle to Descartes, from Aeschylus to Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman - have thought it wise to understand oneself and one's behavior. — Eric Kandel

The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world. — Ingmar Bergman

I haven't put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have. — Ingmar Bergman

I am so 100 percent Swedish ... Someone has said a Swede is like a bottle of ketchup - nothing and nothing and then all at once - splat. I think I'm a little like that. — Ingmar Bergman

Faith is a torment, did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call. — Ingmar Bergman

I think I have made just one picture that I really like ... — Ingmar Bergman

Fellini was more in love with breasts than Russ Meyer, more wracked with guilt than Ingmar Bergman, more of a flamboyant showman than Busby Berkeley ... Amarcord seems almost to flow from the camera, as anecdotes will flow from one who has told them often and knows they work. This was the last of his films made for no better reason than Fellini wanted to make it. — Roger Ebert

I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman, What he has left is a legacy greater than any other director ... I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value. — Paul Schrader

Our social relationships are limited, most of the time, to gossip and criticizing people's behavior. This observation slowly pushed me to isolate from the so-called social life. My days pass by in solitude. — Ingmar Bergman

We make each other alive; it doesn't make a difference if it hurts. — Ingmar Bergman

I always work with 18 friends. — Ingmar Bergman

When I was first exposed to the films of Ingmar Bergman, I found them frank and disturbing portraits of the world we live in, but that was not something that displeased me. They were beautiful. I thought people would respond to my plays the way I responded to Bergman's films. — Wallace Shawn

My education was very tough. — Ingmar Bergman

The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other. — Ingmar Bergman

Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. — Ingmar Bergman

My pictures are always part of my thinking, and my emotions, tensions, dreams, desires. — Ingmar Bergman

I am very shy with people I don't know. — Ingmar Bergman

There hasn't been anyone with whom I can discuss my scripts. Even when the film is done, there is no one I can show it to who gives his sincere opinion. There is silence. — Ingmar Bergman

Today we say all art is political. But I'd say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It's a matter of attitudes. — Ingmar Bergman