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

"For me the filmmaker Bergman is the greatest actor of all. His vision and his filmic force, the thing that the Frenchmen call auteur. What Kurosawa and Fellini also have — but to me Bergman is number one!"

"A French critic cleverly wrote that "with Autumn Sonata Bergman does Bergman" It is witty but unfortunate For me, that is I think it is only too true that Bergman (Ingmar, that is) did a Bergman I love and admire the filmmaker Tarkovsky and believe him to be one of the greatest of all time My admiration for Fellini is limitless But I also feel that Tarkovsky began to make Tarkovsky films and that Fellini began to make Fellini films Yet Kurosawa has never made a Kurosawa film I have never been able to appreciate Bunuel He discovered at an early stage that it is possible to fabricate ingenious tricks, which he elevated to a special kind of genius, particular to Bunuel, and then he repeated and varied his tricks He always received applause Bunuel nearly always made Bunuel films"

"The Seventh Seal was always my favourite film, and I remember seeing it with a small audience at the old New Yorker Theatre. Who would have thought that the subject matter could yield such a pleasurable experience? If I described the story and tried to persuade a friend to watch it with me, how far would I get? Well, Id say, it takes place in a plague-ridden medieval Sweden and explores the limits of faith and reason based on Danish — and some German — philosophical concepts. Now this is hardly anyones idea of a good time, and yet its all dealt off with such stupendous imagination, suspense, and flair that one sits riveted like a child at a harrowing fairy tale. Suddenly the black figure of Death appears on the seashore to claim his victim, and the Knight of Reason challenges him to a chess game, trying to stall for time and discover some meaning to life. The tale engages and stalks forward with sinister inevitability. Again, the images are breathtaking! The flagellants, the burning of the witch (worthy of Carl Dreyer), and the finale, as Death dances off with all the doomed people to the nether lands in one of the most memorable shots in all movies. Bergman is prolific, and the films that followed these early works were rich and varied, as his obsession moved from Gods silence to the tortured relations between anguished souls trying to make sense of their feelings."

"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."

"Now lets get this Devil business straight, once and for all. To begin at the beginning: the notion of God, one might say, has changed aspect over the years, until it has either become so vague that it has faded away altogether or else has turned into something entirely different. For me, hell has always been a most suggestive sort of place; but Ive never regarded it as being located anywhere else than on earth. Hell is created by human beings — on earth! What I believed in those days — and believed in for a long time — was the existence of a virulent evil, in no way dependent upon environmental or hereditary factors. Call it original sin or whatever you like — anyway an active evil, of which human beings, as opposed to animals, have a monopoly. Our very nature, qua human beings, is that inside us we always carry around destructive tendencies, conscious or unconscious, aimed both at ourselves and at the outside world. As a materialization of this virulent, indestructible, and — to us — inexplicable and incomprehensble evil, I manufactured a personage possessing the diabolical traits of a mediaeval morality figure. In various contexts Id made it into a sort of private game to have a diabolic figure hanging around. His evil was one of the springs in my watch-works. And thats all there is to the devil-figure in my early films... Unmotivated cruelty is something which never ceases to fascinate me; and Id very much like to know the reason for it. Its source is obscure and Id very much like to get at it."

"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. Ever since childhood, music has been my great source of recreation and stimulation, and I often experience a film or play musically."