Ingmar Bergman Quotes

When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying, but now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It’s like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.

ياللجحيم! كيف بإمكاني أن أحصل على امرأة؟ أية امرأة؟ كان الجميع يتدبرون أمورهم ما عداي. أنا الذي كنت أمارس العادة السرية، أنا الشاحب، المتعرق، صاحب الهالات الزرقاء حول العينين، الضعيف القدرة على التركيز.

إلى جانب كل هذا، كنت نحيلاً، منكس الرأس، سريع الغضب، البادئ بالصراخ والشجار، سئ العلامات بالمدرسة ومتورم الأُذنين من العقاب.

لقد كانت السينما والمسرح هما ملاذيّ الوحيدين.

Edvard: Du har levat i en konstgjord värld, insnärd i konstgjorda känslor. Jag måste lära dig och dina barn att leva i verkligheten. Det är inte mitt fel att verkeligheten är ett helvete

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.'

Humiliation
Abasement of pride

An artist whose work explores human existence will sooner or later arrive at the theme of humiliation. For Bergman, it did not take long for him to approach the leitmotif. Already present in his 1944 Torment screenplay, the theme of humiliation can be found in most of his work. “To humiliate and be humiliated, I think is a crucial element in our whole social structure,” he told Swedish critic Torsten Manns in an 1970 interview published in the book Bergman on Bergman. His way of tackling the subject is often to show characters being denigrated, like the unsparing emasculation of the clown Frost in the opening scenes of Sawdust and Tinsel or the exam to which Isak Borg is subjected in his final dream in Wild Strawberries.This latter scene is a kind of dressing down of Isak as he is unable to to make any sense of what is asked of him.

Martin Thomasson

Sara: As professor emeritus, you ought to know why it hurts. But you don't know.
Sara: You know so much, and you don't know anything.

Helena Ekdahl, the famous actress – who was brought to Uppsala by her rich, young husband – who bought a theatre for her – and allowed her to play in it until he decided it was time to start a family.

He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau. In my collection I have a copy of Il Grido, and damn what a boring movie it is. So devilishly sad, I mean. You know, Antonioni never really learned the trade... He concentrated on single images, never realising that film is a rhythmic flow of images, a movement. Sure, there are brilliant moments in his films. But I don't feel anything for L'Avventura, for example. Only indifference. I never understood why Antonioni was so incredibly applauded. And I thought his muse Monica Vitti was a terrible actress.

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

We're thankful for the horrors we are used to. The unknown ones are worst

"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.

Sécate las lágrimas y mira el fin con serenidad. Hubieras gozado más de la vida despreocupándote de la eternidad, pero es demasiado tarde. En este último instante goza al menos del prodigio de vivir en la verdad tangible antes de caer en la nada.

I've never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He's made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin, féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mindnumbingly boring.

To the fanatical believer physical and spiritual suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o'-the-wisp. … I can really never get shot of them, the fanatics. Whether they appear as religious fanatics or vegetarian fanatics makes no odds. They're catastrophic people. These types whose whole cast of mind as it were looks beyond mere human beings toward some unknown goal. The terrible thing is the great power they often wield over their fellow human beings. Apart from the fact that I believe they suffer like the very devil, I've no sympathy for them.

It is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, genetaring and degenerating itself.