48 Fun Facts About Ingmar Bergman

During which calamity is The Seventh Seal set?

The plague is ravaging Sweden as the knight comes home from the Crusades; Bergman shot the famous finale of Death leading the travellers away in a hurry, before a dark cloud dissolved.

What was the profession of Bergman's father, Erik?

Lutheran minister Erik Bergman, later chaplain to the royal court, was a stern disciplinarian who punished and publicly humiliated his children.

In The Seventh Seal, what game does the knight Antonius Block play against Death?

Chess is the game: the knight Antonius Block challenges Death to a match on the beach and reckons he will live as long as it lasts.

Who played Death in The Seventh Seal?

Bengt Ekerot had directed the Stockholm stage version of Wood Painting, the play the film grew from, before he played Death on screen.

The Seventh Seal takes its title from which book of the Bible?

Revelation supplies the title, and Bergman drew the film's imagery from medieval church murals such as those painted by Albertus Pictor.

On which Baltic island did Bergman live for much of his life and film many of his works from 1961 onward?

Faro lies just north of Gotland; Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to shoot The Sacrifice there too, but had to settle for neighbouring Gotland.

Which actress, Bergman's partner through the late 1960s, is the mother of his daughter Linn?

Liv Ullmann, his leading lady through those years, later turned director herself and filmed screenplays that Bergman wrote.

Which 1966 Bergman film follows a nurse caring for a stage actress who has stopped speaking?

Persona began in hospital: laid up with pneumonia in 1965, Bergman started the screenplay 'mainly to keep my hand in'.

Which veteran Swedish director played the ageing Professor Isak Borg in a 1957 Bergman film?

Bergman called Victor Sjostrom his guardian angel at the studio, where the veteran befriended him as he struggled through his first feature.

Wes Craven's horror film The Last House on the Left was based on which Oscar-winning Bergman film?

The Virgin Spring's brutal rape scene set off a heated censorship controversy on its release in 1960.

Which Bergman film, announced as his farewell to cinema, won four Oscars including Best Foreign Language Film?

After Fanny and Alexander, Bergman said he lacked the physical and psychological strength for features, yet kept making television films for two more decades.

Which Bergman regular later played the priest Father Merrin in The Exorcist?

Max von Sydow turned down the title role in Dr No to stay in Sweden, yet two decades later played Bond's nemesis Blofeld.

Which 1955 comedy was Bergman's first world success, winning a Cannes prize for 'best poetic humour'?

Smiles of a Summer Night, a country-house comedy of couplings, charmed Cannes in 1956; its success let Bergman push through the previously refused screenplay for The Seventh Seal.

For which film did Bergman win Best Director at Cannes in 1958?

Brink of Life was a film Bergman had promised Sveriges Folkbiografer, so he built it from two short stories by his friend Ulla Isaksson.

Which Bergman film, the first of his 'faith trilogy', has a young woman who sees God as a spider?

Through a Glass Darkly opened the trilogy Bergman declared in a 1963 note, though he later dismissed the whole idea as a 'Schnaps-Idee'.

Which Bergman film follows a doubting pastor who holds a service in a nearly empty church?

Winter Light's ending came from a real service where a feverish pastor, having announced no communion, held one after all.

Which colour fills the walls and carpets of the manor house in Cries and Whispers?

Crimson came from an image that kept coming back to Bergman: women dressed in white, whispering in a big red room.

Who was Bergman's best-known cinematographer, twice an Oscar winner for their films together?

Sven Nykvist later stepped behind the camera as a director himself, and his film The Ox earned a Best Foreign Language Film nomination.

Bergman was arrested for tax evasion in 1976 while rehearsing a play by which dramatist?

August Strindberg's The Dance of Death was in rehearsal when police led Bergman away; the humiliation brought on a nervous breakdown.

In which city did Bergman settle during his self-imposed exile after the 1976 tax affair?

Munich was his base, where he directed at the Residenztheater, after talks about working in Hollywood came to nothing.

What was the name of the production company Bergman owned and used to finance his own films?

Cinematograph couldn't cover Cries and Whispers alone, so its lead actresses and cinematographer invested their fees in the film.

Which honorary Oscar did Bergman receive in 1971?

The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, given to producers for consistently high-quality work, went to Bergman at the ceremony held in April 1971, honouring his body of work.

What special prize did Cannes give Bergman at its 50th anniversary in 1997?

The Palme des Palmes was a one-off honour created for the festival's 50th edition in 1997; Bergman had never won the Palme d'Or itself despite several nominations.

For which 1944 film, directed by Alf Sjoberg, did Bergman write his first produced screenplay?

Torment (Hets), released in Britain as Frenzy, follows a sadistic Latin teacher nicknamed Caligula; it stirred debate about Swedish schools, and Bergman's old headmaster called him a problem child.

Which city's municipal theatre made the young Bergman its head in 1944, a record-young appointment?

Helsingborg's theatre saw him recast Macbeth in 1944 as a wartime drama about a murderer and a war criminal.

Who starred opposite Jessica Chastain in HBO's 2021 remake of Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage?

Oscar Isaac was first paired with Michelle Williams, who dropped out over scheduling, so his A Most Violent Year co-star Chastain took over.

Which American filmmaker called Bergman 'probably the greatest film artist' since the invention of the movie camera?

Woody Allen parodied The Seventh Seal's figure of Death in his 1975 comedy Love and Death, whose hero finally dances away with Death.

Which concert pianist was Bergman's fourth wife?

Kabi Laretei, an Estonian-born concert pianist, taught Bergman much about music, and her playing is heard in several of his films.

Which other celebrated director died on the same day as Bergman, 30 July 2007?

Michelangelo Antonioni had been left almost speechless by a stroke, yet he still went on to direct Beyond the Clouds.

What was Bergman's last film, a 2003 sequel to Scenes from a Marriage?

Saraband, made for Swedish television in 2003, reunited Ullmann and Erland Josephson as Marianne and Johan thirty years after Scenes from a Marriage.

With which Ibsen play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music did Bergman make his last stage production in 2003?

Ghosts, staged at Dramaten in 2002 and brought to Brooklyn the following year, was Bergman's farewell to the theatre after six decades of directing.

What is the title of the autobiography Bergman published in 1987?

Laterna Magica is Latin for the magic lantern, the toy projector the boy Bergman used for shows before moving on to his own puppet theatre.

On a teenage summer trip, Bergman saw which dictator address a rally?

Adolf Hitler had a teenage admirer in Bergman, who admitted backing him for years until the truth about the concentration camps came out.

Which was Bergman's first English-language film, made in 1971?

The Touch paired Bibi Andersson with Elliott Gould, and Bergman later called it a story he had 'bungled so badly', made partly to earn money.

Which Hollywood star played the concert-pianist mother in Autumn Sonata (1978)?

Ingrid Bergman, no relation to the director, had slipped a letter into his pocket at Cannes reminding him of his promise to make a film together.

Which Mozart opera did Bergman film for television in 1975?

The Magic Flute was filmed on a studio copy of Drottningholm's court theatre, a stage Bergman said he had wandered into as a boy.

What did Bergman call himself in a 1960 TIME magazine cover story?

The conjurer had been almost unknown abroad until a 1956 Cannes prize, after which cinemas overseas began showing even his early films.

Which Stephen Sondheim stage show, first seen on Broadway in 1973, grew out of a Bergman comedy?

A Little Night Music was later filmed with Elizabeth Taylor, and Sondheim rewrote The Glamorous Life for the screen version.

Which director wrote to Bergman that his vision of life had moved him 'more deeply than any films'?

Stanley Kubrick sent the letter in February 1960, praising Bergman's handling of actors and 'vision of life' and calling him the greatest filmmaker then at work.

Which 1963 Bergman film, noted for its frank sexuality, was passed without cuts by Sweden's censors?

The Silence, Bergman predicted, would have nobody rushing to see it, yet it became a box-office hit amid the moral outrage.

Which 1953 Bergman film follows a young couple who run off from Stockholm into its archipelago?

Summer with Monika was sold to American audiences as the Story of a Bad Girl, after its US distributor recut it to play up the nudity.

In which Swedish city was Ingmar Bergman born in July 1918?

Uppsala was his birthplace, and as a boy he often took refuge in his grandmother's huge apartment there.

Which Bergman film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1958?

Wild Strawberries took Berlin's Golden Bear; Bergman said he wrote it while desperately trying to justify himself to parents who had turned away.

Which American actor finally took the lead in Bergman's The Serpent's Egg after several stars fell through?

David Carradine got the part after, Bergman said, a screening of his country-singer film Bound for Glory enchanted him.

Which city's municipal playhouse did Bergman lead through the 1950s, before Dramaten in Stockholm?

Malmö City Theatre was his base for most of the 1950s, and several future screen regulars first worked with him there on stage.

Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977) was a US co-production with which country?

West Germany was the partner: Dino De Laurentiis produced it with a German company, and Bergman had a whole 1920s Berlin street built for it.

Which 1946 film was Bergman's debut as a director, a flop that nearly ended his film career?

Crisis flopped, and it was the independent producer Lorens Marmstedt who then gave Bergman another chance.

Which Swedish prime minister was in office when Bergman left Sweden for exile in spring 1976?

Olof Palme lost power after that year's election, while Bergman vowed never to work in Sweden again.