37 quotes
I suppose that's what the final sequence tries to express. The notion of love as the only thinkable form of holiness.
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.
Ingmar's self portrait (1957)
Film has dream, film has music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.
Laterna Magica (1987)
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.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960)
When film is not a document, it is dream.
On Andrei Tarkovsky in Laterna Magica (1987)
I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.
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.
People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it.
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960)
I hope I never get so old I get religious.
The moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship? God's silence.
You find him disgusting with his thick mouth and ugly body and wet appealing eyes. You think he's disgusting and you're afraid.
This damned ranting about doom. Is that food for the minds of modern people? Do they really expect us to take them seriously?
When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination.
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...
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
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.
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960)
The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960)
For me, hell has always been a most suggestive sort of place; but I've never regarded it as being located anywhere else than on earth. Hell is created by human beings — on earth!
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.
The image that later became famous of the Dance of Death beneath the dark cloud was improvised in only a few minutes. That's how things can happen on the set.
Images : My Life in Films (1990)