--- title: That Old Feeling: To Liv With Bergman description: Ghosts haunt the house Marianne has just entered. Doors slam shut without warning or visible agent; a cuckoo clock breaks the silence with its bizarre... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6907790/that-old-feeling-to-liv-with-bergman/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2005-07-10T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-22T15:08:35.350Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: That Old Feeling: To Liv With Bergman og:description: Ghosts haunt the house Marianne has just entered. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) Jul 10, 2005 4:00 AM UTC by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) Jul 10, 2005 4:00 AM UTC Ghosts haunt the house Marianne has just entered. Doors slam shut without warning or visible agent; a cuckoo clock breaks the silence with its bizarre chimes and chirps. The middle-aged woman survives these little shocks and finds the man she’s looking for. Dozing on the veranda is Johan, her long-ago husband, whom she has not seen for many years. His age, 86, has enfeebled him; his hand shakes from Parkinson’s. He is beyond the spontaneous gesture: “I intend to put my arms around you,” he announces before they share a starchy hug. And his world view is devoutly frosty. “Sometimes,” he tells her, “I look at my voluntary isolation and think I’m in Hell. That I’m already dead, though I don’t know it. My life has been shit. A thoroughly meaningless, idiotic life.” Looking at the old cynic, Marianne can’t help smiling. In the first few minutes of [_Saraband,_](http://www.sonyclassics.com/saraband/) certain viewers will slip instantly into the world of Ingmar Bergman. The immediate clue is the presence of two familiar actors, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, stalwarts of the Swedish writer-director’s informal repertory troupe. Here they are revisiting the roles they played in the 1972 _Scenes from a Marriage,_ to which the new work is not so much a sequel as a descendant. There are also echoes of a dozen or more of Bergman’s despairing, exhilarating films. The old themes nudge you: death, and those who aspire to it; love, and how it sours; the inexorable decay of the body and the spirit; the need to reach out for others, and the fear that in doing so we will claw them, or be devoured. Dear seekers of light summer entertainment, you have gathered that Bergman’s film is not _Shrek 2_ or _Wedding Crashers._ It’s more like _Shriek 42_ or _Marriage Crushers._ To moviegoers raised in the Age of Facetiousness, a dead-serious story about the pain people maliciously or clumsily inflict on themselves and one another must seem a blast from the past. A blast of musty air, that is, best suited for quaint old art-film houses, where the scent of cappuccino mixes with an aura of intellectual smugness. Titles like _The Naked Night,_ [_Smiles of a Summer Night_](/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,smiles%5Fof%5Fa%5Fsummer%5Fnight,00.html)_, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence,_ [_Persona_](/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,persona,00.html)_, Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata, Fanny and Alexander_ and _After the Rehearsal,_ which once constituted a summa-cum-laude cinematic honor roll, have since tumbled into Trivial Pursuit territory. But Bergman, who made _Saraband_ two years ago and turns 87 on Thursday, is secure enough not to care what people think of him, or to fret that they may not think of him at all. Neither do I. I’ve been a Bergman admirer since the 1950s, as I will itemize ad infinitum in my next column. So I welcome his return. No matter how severe the emotional landscape, his palpable presence behind the camera, and the force he still bring to a wrestling match with his demons, are causes for celebration. The Master has returned, in triumph. **TORMENT** _Saraband,_ which Bergman shot on digital video (and which will play in theaters only in that format), is not really a sequel to _Scenes from a Marriage_. It uses the two main figures from the earlier film to explore new relationships: Johan’s with his son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) and Henrik’s with his teenage daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). All three have been handicapped by desolation over the death of Henrik’s much-loved wife Anna. Henrik, a failed musician, has transferred his ambition to Karin, a promising cellist. When Anna was alive, Henrik was lost in love with Anna; and, Karin says, “I was a little shut out of that love.” Now Karin is all he has. His ardor, as two startling moments indicate, is at least emotionally incestuous. One scene begins with Henrik in bed with his daughter; another includes a kiss that begins as tearful love and briefly surrenders to Henrik’s passion. With the same intensity as he loves Karin, Henrik loathes his cold-fish father. “I hate him so much I’d happily watch him die of some horrible disease,” he tells the shocked Marianne when they meet in the deserted village church. “I’d visit him daily and take note of his torment down to the last breath.” Johan is equally venomous, telling his son, “If you didn’t have Karin, who, thank God, takes after her mother, you wouldn’t exist for me at all.” But behind his contempt is the ache of envy. Johan, whom Marianne describes as “notoriously and compulsively unfaithful” and who never came within shouting distance of marital bliss, finds it “incomprehensible that Henrik was given the privilege of loving Anna and that she loved him.” Here they are: love, God and death — the old Bergman trinity. Here it is: “Filote me” (“Forgive me!”) — the old mantra of Bergman characters who have committed so many transgressions. Here again are characters who remorselessly analyze and criticize themselves, squeezing the life out of a feeling before they can experience it. Bergman’s gift is just the opposite: he takes this familiar, punishing scenario and, through his spare artistry and the devotion of his actors, squeezes life into it. Example: Henrik, the most tortured of this quartet, is allowed to reveal his charm before his pain, then his white-hot hatred, are allowed to postulate. Similarly, flashes of grace appear, like epiphanies in the January snow. In church, after Marianne has been singed by Henrik’s rage against his father, beams of sunlight burst through the window; it is the visual counterpart of the organ chord that greeted Marianne as she entered. Later there’s a privileged moment when Karin is told of a career opportunity and the ecstasy of anticipation briefly floods her face, as radiant as that sunlit church. Bergman keeps energizing _Saraband_ with such touchstones; he builds the edifice of the film on this latticework. And these superb actors — three veteran colleagues, one (Dufvenius) a newcomer in the great tradition of Bergman ingenues — give the characters sinew and subtlety. The totality is an amazingly vigorous achievement — and not just for an old man. (Only the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who at 96 has completed 10 feature films in the past decade, has outlasted Bergman.) _Saraband_ is a film worthy of being counted among Bergman’s strongest. Which means among the finest there are, or are likely to be, for a while. **THE ACTRESS AND THE DIRECTOR** It may seem ghoulish to go fishing for real-life connections between the sad characters in _Saraband_ and Bergman’s own turbulent domestic life. But his films are so personal, and he has been so outspoken about writing his emotional autobiography on the screen, that such expeditions are inevitable. So know that _Saraband_ is dedicated to Ingrid, Bergman’s fifth wife, who died in 1995; she likely inspired the film’s much-mourned Anna. Bergman’s relationships with his children, especially his sons, were often stormy. One child he did feel close to, as Johan does to Karin in the film, was Maria von Rosen, Ingrid’s daughter by a previous marriage. Last year Bergman revealed that Maria was his own daughter, and published _Three Diaries,_ which described Ingrid’s last days from her own, her husband’s and her daughter’s journals. In preparing [a piece about Bergman and _Saraband_ for the magazine](/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1079507,00.html), I was blessed to be able to speak with Ullmann. At 66, the Norwegian actress could comfortably retire after 40 years as an international star and the muse of Bergman in one of his most fertile filmmaking periods. Yet she has equaled her acting work by directing: four features, including two Bergman scripts, _Private Confessions_ (1976) and _Faithless_ (2000). A few Ullmann quotes illuminated the TIME story. Here is the meat of the interview, in which she speaks warmly about her life and career with Bergman and frankly about some of the family specters he conjured up: **TIME:** Since Ingmar Bergman had written scripts over the past 20 years, and entrusted them to directors like yourself, I wonder what forced him back behind the camera this time. **ULLMANN:** This one was so personal. The whole writing was very personal. And I believe that only he would really want to make into a film. I also think it was tempting for him, one more time, to work with some favorite actors, and to go into the studio one more time. **TIME:** He’s been working on the stage until just a few years ago. **ULLMANN:** Yes. The last thing he did was _Ghosts_ by Henrik Ibsen, three or four years ago. Then he said “this is the last.” And when he did this film, which was a surprise for everybody, he said “This is the last I do,” in terms of script and film. And now I know he really means it. I think the reason he did this film is because, when Erland Josephson and I did _Faithless,_ we were joking a lot. And we made some kind of goof version of _Scenes from a Marriage,_ showing that we were really gaga, strange, and old. And I sent it to Ingmar just for fun, **TIME:** You sent him a tape of some improvised scenes. **ULLMANN:** Yes, but kind of fun scenes. And he loved that. And somewhat later he said “You know, I am writing something about Marianne and Johan.” And, oh God, he was writing. Then he said, “I want to direct it with her \[Ullmann\]. The comedy is coming.” Of course, it was no comedy; it was somewhat the opposite. **GREEK TRAGEDY** ULLMANN: I feel the reason that Ingmar used Johan and Marianne was not to go back to their story. It was to use people that were known, so that he did not have to introduce them, and then to make something new, which had to do with Johan’s relations: the grandchild, the son and the wife’s death. And Marianne is the stranger who wandered into it. Maybe she is the only one who was somewhat changed by it, by seeing and observing. **TIME:** She might also be the only character we could trust to tell us the story. **ULLMANN:** I think so too, because Marianne in _Scenes from a Marriage_ is a kind of sane and normal woman. And I think she still is: an ordinary, nice woman who sees and can be trusted on what she sees. She is like a Greek chorus. **TIME:** There is something like Greek tragedy in the relationships of father and son — Johan and Henrik — and then father and daughter — Henrik and Karin. **ULLMANN:** I know. It is such a sad story for them. It is a love story, but the love story Johan describes is how they all can love somebody, but only somebody who is dead. And that, of course, is an easy way to love, because the dead have no needs. **TIME:** Not since _Rebecca_ has a dead woman cast such a spell over a movie. **ULLMANN** \[laughing\]: I know. **TIME:** Of course, there are ghosts a-plenty in Bergman’s films. **ULLMANN:** You’re right. But it was hard for all of us to find out what kind of influence this woman has, because she is really not fully described or much-seen. I think she represents a need the others have for her — because she was just an ordinary woman herself. **TIME:** Henrik and Karin’s relationship is very complicated. There’s a perplexing moment when Karen comes back into the cottage she shares with her father and says, “Things are going to have to change! I’m going to bed!” She takes off her shirt and strides into the bedroom — and in the next scene Henrik is in bed with her! **ULLMANN:** I think it is up for anyone to guess. I have made the choice not to look upon it as incest. I don’t really think it is. I think it is just a clumsy, horrible way of trying to get close to somebody. But there are people who do see that it may be also the description of incest. **TIME:** There is also the very powerful kiss that Henrik and Karin share when Henrik gets carried away just a bit. **ULLMANN:** Well, I don’t want to see that. Which, I’m sure, was one of the reasons why Ingmar never gave the script for me to direct. We look at life somewhat different. You know, when actors do a movie with Ingmar we don’t ask, “What do you mean?” or “Is there really incest?” It’s up to each of us to make a choice. I talked a lot to Julia Dufvenius, who played the daughter, and she didn’t want to believe it either. So I think this is really up to the people who see it. But, obviously — probably — this was in Ingmar’s mind, to describe an incestuous relationship. Whether they go the whole way or not maybe isn’t so important. **TIME:** The magnificent twist that Bergman runs in his characters is to make them do monstrous things yet make them, if not sympathetic, certainly pitiable. And with Henrik, I think we can see that Karen is his only link to Anna. Because the look the two people exchange before they kiss has tremendous compassion in it. And I could see that Henrik might be carried away by the memory of Anna. **ULLMANN:** You really see something that Ingmar would have liked that you saw. And, probably, you are very much right. **TIME:** I think you’re saying there’s something perverse in me! **ULLMANN:** Not at all! I know so much of the stories that are happening in real life, and I know that you really hit the nail. **HOW BERGMAN DIRECTS** TIME: I was thinking of one Bergman’s greatest admirers, Woody Allen. As you probably know, he doesn’t give his actors the entire script for the film, just their own scenes. But Bergman isn’t like that, right? Isn’t his direction of actors in film rooted in his direction of actors in the theatre? **ULLMANN:** Yes, he wouldn’t work with someone who hadn’t been part of stage life. I think all his actors always have to belong to the stage. And, obviously, we get the whole script. He also feels that we are bright enough, have time to see enough, experience enough, to read into it what we understand of the characters. So he will never say what you are thinking, or why you are doing something. He will give the blockings; then he will sit and watch. He may be very inspired by an actor who is giving him something that he hasn’t even thought of. Then he may change somewhat the blocking, or say “do it once more,” and he will challenge the actor to maybe show something else. The actors have to be creative. Remember that Ingmar knows to whom he’s writing the parts. So there is no way that he would write a part \[for an actress\] if he knows that she wouldn’t really understand it. If he thinks she can understand it, then he’ll write it for her. Certainly he wouldn’t have done this movie if it didn’t have Erland and he didn’t have me. **TIME:** Would you or Bille August, who directed the _Fanny and Alexander_ sequel _The Best Intentions,_ consult with Bergman on the casting of the films that he wrote and you were to direct? **ULLMANN:** But absolutely. Both Bille August and I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t Ingmar’s choice. But the choices were so obvious in all the cases for the leads. For _Private Confessions_ I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else but Pernilla August \[the actress who was married to director Bille\] because she had played the same woman, Ingmar’s mother, in _Best Intentions._ She even looks like Ingmar’s mother. And in _Saraband,_ the dead woman Anna, seen in a photograph — she also looks like Ingmar’s mother. **TIME:** By creating this family of actors, for whom he writes, and whom he knows so well, he reduces the surprise element. **ULLMANN:** Yes. When he writes, he knows more or less what he’s getting. But there can still be surprises. The last scene in _Saraband,_, where I’m behind a table with all these photographs, I thought would be an incredible closeup where I would do some big-time acting. And it wasn’t that at all. I asked him, “Why am I doing this?” He just said, “Do it and see what happens.” He usually sits by the camera, but this time he didn’t. He was sitting in a corner of the big room; we didn’t even see each other. And somehow we had this incredible connection. It was like smoke signals, like we were Indians. I was caught in an emotion, which I wouldn’t have been if I had done it the way I would have liked to. You know, big closeup — everything would have happened much earlier. This is one of his tricks to make an actor be creative, because I could allow myself as an actress in a play to be taken by the emotions I had. I know that happened to other actors too. In the scene where Erland is naked, you know, everything that Erland also as a person felt then, Ingmar allowed Erland also to feel the shame of being naked and the feeling of being old, and create from there. Ingmar gives us that freedom, that faith, with which this can happen. And that’s why Erland was so incredible in so many of the movies because he got the faith to be something else. **HIS ALTER EGOS** **TIME:** For about 15 years, from _The Seventh Seal_ through _The Magician_ and _The Virgin Spring_ and in three films with you, Max von Sydow was the actor who embodied the Bergman male. His clear gaze, blond hair and jutting jaw gave a heroic aspect to even the most flawed or timid characters. Then he stopped, and Josephson became the male character. There was a difference: something more domestic in Josephson, though no less powerful or bitter. **ULLMANN:** Honestly, I think it’s because Ingmar was writing himself into the female characters — my characters. I was being Ingmar, the way Max used to be. I think it’s only because he wanted to work with me that he wrote it for a woman instead of a man. That is my theory, anyway. **TIME:** Von Sydow just abruptly disappeared from Bergman films. My guess was they had a fight, the way Kurosawa and his regular star, Toshiro Mifune, did. **ULLMANN:** No, they didn’t. The only fight, and it involved me too, was with _Fanny and Alexander._ This was to be his last film. Max had certain reasons why he didn’t want to be in it. I was in a Norwegian film and didn’t want to do more tragedies. It was stupid; I regret it till this day. He didn’t get any of us \[his regular stars\], and I know he was tremendously upset. He said to me, “You have lost your birthright” — very dramatic, something from the Bible. And I did this Norwegian film, which wasn’t good at all, and we didn’t speak for almost a year. Later he asked me to come to Stockholm to see _Sunday’s Children_ \[directed by his son Daniel\], and I cried because I wasn’t in it. I cried and cried. **CANNIBAL** TIME: Bergman’s films have always been both the most universal and most personal. They touched on great themes while seeming as intimate as, well, private confessions. I’m guessing that many aspects of his daily life got into his films. As his partner for a decade or more, did you find aspects of your personal life showing up in the scripts? **ULLMANN:** Only in _Scenes from A Marriage._ And then maybe too much. Things that I had talked about were in there. And, I didn’t know about this until later, my wedding photo from the marriage to my first husband. It was part of the movie, but only that movie. **TIME:** Isn’t that a form of trespassing? **ULLMANN:** No, it isn’t really. A writer, a screenwriter, a novelist has to be some kind of a cannibal. You have to be able to look at people, love them, recognize them, but also take from them. I don’t mind that. My first husband did, though. He was watching _Scenes from a Marriage_ on TV \[the original miniseries was cut to feature length for its theatrical release\], and he saw our wedding picture there in the film, and he got so upset, he left the room and never saw the end of the movie. But I understand why Ingmar did that. It’s part of being creative. **TIME:** Some of the actresses Bergman worked closest with — you and Harriet Andersson and Bibi Andersson, to name just three — were women he had also lived with. And sometimes they were cast in roles that seemed similar to what they were. I wonder if an actress ever said, “Thanks Ingmar, for putting the least attractive part of me into a movie role.” **ULLMANN:** Actually, and luckily, what he sees in people are not always who they are! **TIME:** I suppose that the person he is most analytically ruthless toward is himself. There are so many variations on his opinion of himself at its darkest in his male characters, and some of his female characters. **ULLMANN:** Very much in the female characters. It’s certainly true that many of the characters I played in his films _are_ Ingmar. That’s what I found out in _Persona_ — that I was really playing Ingmar. You know, he said recently that he’s grown to understand that empathy hasn’t always been a strong side of him. Sometimes maybe if you’re a genius, you have to be ruthless. **TIME:** Bergman once related a conversation he had with one of his sons. He said, “I guess I’ve been a bad father.” And his son said, “You’ve been no father at all” And that very dialog shows up in _Saraband._ **ULLMANN:** Exactly. To me, at least, this movie is very much about his son and his relationship with him. This is also very private. **BERGMAN ALONE** TIME: It seems odd that, having emerged to direct a film, and such a fervent one, Bergman would declare that his artistic career was over. **ULLMANN:** The day he finished _Saraband_ he just slept. And the next day he announced his retirement. Now he’s sitting on his island and he’s been there for two years, He doesn’t see many people. Actually he sees almost no one. **TIME:** Who takes care of him? **ULLMANN:** A lady who lives on the island comes between 3 and 6 every day. She makes his food and washes the house, and that’s it. He says, “I’m walking on the beach and watching the sun go up and come down.” And then he watches movies. And he watches theater plays and opera on the TV. And he listens to a lot of music; he loves music. And he reads. And he reads and he reads. **TIME:** Well, he made so many films about man’s isolation from his fellow man. Maybe he’s ready to experience it. **ULLMANN:** I think he doesn’t miss going traveling or being on the stage or in the studio. But I think he misses the visits of the actors, talking with them, creating with them. Even imagining their visits — that they come to him in the night somehow, while he’s lying there thinking of what he’s going to do the next day with them, and he kind of discusses scenes with them. He’s shutting his eyes, and they are telling him maybe you should do this or do that. That fantasy life. That is what he’s missing. That is the great loss he has. **TIME:** But it was he who announced his retirement. Nobody forced it on him. **ULLMANN:** I know! I know. “And why don’t you go back? Why don’t you just gravitate to these people or make a movie there. Why?” No. He’s reading. “This is the time in my life when I’m reading.” And in preparation for what? I do not know. **TIME:** Is he on the phone much? **ULLMANN:** Not too much, but when he talks it’s like a couple of hours. And it’s so inspiring. I take a pencil in my hand and I write down what he says. Now he’s chosen to isolate himself, and I don’t understand it. Because he misses the actors the way the actors are missing him—tremendously. **TIME:** He’s not diminished physically? He’s still hale and hearty? **ULLMANN:** Oh, he will complain that something is wrong with his finger. But he is absolutely, completely well. **TIME:** I look at photos of Bergman over six decades, and he seems to have changed remarkably little. **ULLMANN:** You know, I tried to talk Ingmar into having TIME magazine come to interview him. You would have come wouldn’t you? **TIME:** of course I would have. We could’ve been alone together! **ULLMANN:** But I tell you it was absolutely hopeless. He doesn’t want to speak to anyone. He will not do it. **WHATEVER HAPPENED TO INGMAR BERGMAN?** TIME: As someone who grew up with Bergman as a patron saint for the ambitions of cinema in the 50s and 60s, I’m discouraged that when I mention him now, I sometimes get a blank look. His name hasn’t been tarnished; it’s become more remote, less distinct. I was with some young people here recently, and the name Ingmar Bergman was unknown to them. **ULLMANN:** You’re joking! **TIME:** I said he was one of the greatest of all filmmakers, and that his new film marked a return to greatness. **ULLMANN:** He’s so brave. Most people, if they want to make a comeback, they do it with really big drums. Instead he comes with something like _Saraband._ It’s like, “Okay, this is who I am. I’m not changing for you.” That’s what’s so brave and so wonderful. He isn’t cheating. Even though he’s 87 years old, he’s not cheating. He stays to the story he wants to tell, and he’s telling it in all the new shapes and shades. It’s not for everyone, but I know people will go to a movie house and they will be touched by _Saraband_. They will be different. It’s like, you see a movie and suddenly you understand what movies can really be like. You don’t get that any more, not so much. **TIME:** Maybe the idea of taking films seriously, and of films taking their characters and themselves seriously, and digging into characters — sometimes with a scalpel, the way Bergman does — is simply not in fashion. **ULLMANN:** I absolutely agree. **TIME:** Well, we’re both of a certain age, so we say that everything then was better than anything now. **ULLMANN:** But why can’t we say that? It really may be true. My gratitude to TIME’s Leslie Bernard-Joseph and Julian Rothkopf for their expert transcribing of the Ullmann interview. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6907790/that-old-feeling-to-liv-with-bergman/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6907790/that-old-feeling-to-liv-with-bergman/"},"headline":"That Old Feeling: To Liv With Bergman","datePublished":"2005-07-10T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-22T15:08:35.350Z","description":"Ghosts haunt the house Marianne has just entered. 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