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This article is more than 19 years old

Bergman talks of his dreams and demons in rare

interview
Xan Brooks
@XanBrooks
Wed 12 Dec 2001 11.08 GMT

Ingmar Bergman offered an insight into his life and working methods in a rare
interview with Reuters earlier this week. The venerated film-maker discussed the
demons which drive his films and recounted a recent dream about a "large,
shimmering green bird" that spoke to him in a field. "I am normally afraid of birds and
have never dreamt of any bird in my life," he said. The 85-year-old director implied
that the dream was a message from his late wife, Ingrid.

Bergman also discussed his early influences and the strict upbringing which he says
led him to escape into a fantasy world. "Hence my difficulty in separating the dream
world from the real one. I became a great liar to escape the punishments. Caning was
at the core of upbringing 70 years ago, but it was still horrific."

The creator of such landmarks as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Cries and
Whispers, Bergman became a byword for a certain strain of anguished art-house
cinema. He admits that it was his own personal demons that were behind his most
famous films. "The demons are innumerable, arrive at the most inappropriate times
and create panic and terror," he explained. "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." The trick, he said, was to create some beauty out of the ugliness. "Lilies
often grow out of carcasses' arseholes," he quipped.

Bergman retired from film directing in 1982 after the release of his Oscar-winning
Fanny and Alexander. Since then he has worked mainly in the theatre, but will return
to the cameras next year to direct a TV film, Don't Go. Of the current crop of younger
film-makers, the Swedish legend likes Lukas Moodysson, Atom Egoyan, and
Alexander Sokurov. But he reserves his most fulsome praise for Danish maverick Lars
Von Trier who, Bergman said, "does not understand what a genius he is."

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