Ingmar Bergman Trivia
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48 free Ingmar Bergman trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Ingmar Bergman trivia quiz covers the Swedish director whose films about faith, death and marriage made him one of the most admired artists of the twentieth century. The easy questions cover the country, the pastor father, the knight who plays chess with Death, the island where he lived and died and the actress most closely associated with him. From there the quiz moves through the career: the screenplay for Torment, the Cannes prize for Smiles of a Summer Night, the 35-day shoot of The Seventh Seal, Victor Sjostrom in Wild Strawberries, the so-called faith trilogy, Persona, the crimson rooms of Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage and the five-hour Fanny and Alexander. The hard end covers the man behind the camera: the summer in Nazi Germany at sixteen, the theatres in Helsingborg, Malmo and Stockholm, the 1976 arrest during a Strindberg rehearsal, the exile in Munich, the Thalberg award, the three foreign-language Oscars, the Palme des Palmes, Sven Nykvist and Woody Allen, the nervous stomach and the private lavatories, the five marriages, and the day he died alongside Antonioni. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our film directors, world cinema and Sweden quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01During which calamity is The Seventh Seal set?
The plague
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.
Q 02What was the profession of Bergman's father, Erik?
Lutheran minister
Lutheran minister Erik Bergman, later chaplain to the royal court, was a stern disciplinarian who punished and publicly humiliated his children.
Q 03In The Seventh Seal, what game does the knight Antonius Block play against Death?
Chess
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.
Q 04Who played Death in The Seventh Seal?
Bengt Ekerot
Bengt Ekerot had directed the Stockholm stage version of Wood Painting, the play the film grew from, before he played Death on screen.
Q 05The Seventh Seal takes its title from which book of the Bible?
Revelation
Revelation supplies the title, and Bergman drew the film's imagery from medieval church murals such as those painted by Albertus Pictor.
Q 06On which Baltic island did Bergman live for much of his life and film many of his works from 1961 onward?
Faro
Faro lies just north of Gotland; Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to shoot The Sacrifice there too, but had to settle for neighbouring Gotland.
Q 07Which actress, Bergman's partner through the late 1960s, is the mother of his daughter Linn?
Liv Ullmann
Liv Ullmann, his leading lady through those years, later turned director herself and filmed screenplays that Bergman wrote.
Q 08Which 1966 Bergman film follows a nurse caring for a stage actress who has stopped speaking?
Persona
Persona began in hospital: laid up with pneumonia in 1965, Bergman started the screenplay 'mainly to keep my hand in'.
Q 09Which veteran Swedish director played the ageing Professor Isak Borg in a 1957 Bergman film?
Victor Sjostrom
Bergman called Victor Sjostrom his guardian angel at the studio, where the veteran befriended him as he struggled through his first feature.
Q 10Wes Craven's horror film The Last House on the Left was based on which Oscar-winning Bergman film?
The Virgin Spring
The Virgin Spring's brutal rape scene set off a heated censorship controversy on its release in 1960.
Q 11Which Bergman film, announced as his farewell to cinema, won four Oscars including Best Foreign Language Film?
Fanny and Alexander
After Fanny and Alexander, Bergman said he lacked the physical and psychological strength for features, yet kept making television films for two more decades.
Q 12Which Bergman regular later played the priest Father Merrin in The Exorcist?
Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow turned down the title role in Dr No to stay in Sweden, yet two decades later played Bond's nemesis Blofeld.
Q 13Which 1955 comedy was Bergman's first world success, winning a Cannes prize for 'best poetic humour'?
Smiles of a Summer Night
Q 21What was the name of the production company Bergman owned and used to finance his own films?
Cinematograph
Cinematograph couldn't cover Cries and Whispers alone, so its lead actresses and cinematographer invested their fees in the film.
Q 22Which honorary Oscar did Bergman receive in 1971?
The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
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.
Q 23What special prize did Cannes give Bergman at its 50th anniversary in 1997?
The Palme des Palmes
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.
Q 14For which film did Bergman win Best Director at Cannes in 1958?
Brink of Life
Brink of Life was a film Bergman had promised Sveriges Folkbiografer, so he built it from two short stories by his friend Ulla Isaksson.
Q 15Which Bergman film, the first of his 'faith trilogy', has a young woman who sees God as a spider?
Through a Glass Darkly
Through a Glass Darkly opened the trilogy Bergman declared in a 1963 note, though he later dismissed the whole idea as a 'Schnaps-Idee'.
Q 16Which Bergman film follows a doubting pastor who holds a service in a nearly empty church?
Winter Light
Winter Light's ending came from a real service where a feverish pastor, having announced no communion, held one after all.
Q 17Which colour fills the walls and carpets of the manor house in Cries and Whispers?
Crimson
Crimson came from an image that kept coming back to Bergman: women dressed in white, whispering in a big red room.
Q 18Who was Bergman's best-known cinematographer, twice an Oscar winner for their films together?
Sven Nykvist
Sven Nykvist later stepped behind the camera as a director himself, and his film The Ox earned a Best Foreign Language Film nomination.
Q 19Bergman was arrested for tax evasion in 1976 while rehearsing a play by which dramatist?
August Strindberg
August Strindberg's The Dance of Death was in rehearsal when police led Bergman away; the humiliation brought on a nervous breakdown.
Q 20In which city did Bergman settle during his self-imposed exile after the 1976 tax affair?
Munich
Munich was his base, where he directed at the Residenztheater, after talks about working in Hollywood came to nothing.
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.
Q 24For which 1944 film, directed by Alf Sjoberg, did Bergman write his first produced screenplay?
Torment
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.
Q 25Which city's municipal theatre made the young Bergman its head in 1944, a record-young appointment?
Helsingborg
Helsingborg's theatre saw him recast Macbeth in 1944 as a wartime drama about a murderer and a war criminal.
Q 26Who starred opposite Jessica Chastain in HBO's 2021 remake of Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage?
Oscar Isaac
Oscar Isaac was first paired with Michelle Williams, who dropped out over scheduling, so his A Most Violent Year co-star Chastain took over.
Q 27Which American filmmaker called Bergman 'probably the greatest film artist' since the invention of the movie camera?
Woody Allen
Woody Allen parodied The Seventh Seal's figure of Death in his 1975 comedy Love and Death, whose hero finally dances away with Death.
Q 28Which concert pianist was Bergman's fourth wife?
Kabi Laretei
Kabi Laretei, an Estonian-born concert pianist, taught Bergman much about music, and her playing is heard in several of his films.
Q 29Which other celebrated director died on the same day as Bergman, 30 July 2007?
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni had been left almost speechless by a stroke, yet he still went on to direct Beyond the Clouds.
Q 30What was Bergman's last film, a 2003 sequel to Scenes from a Marriage?
Saraband
Saraband, made for Swedish television in 2003, reunited Ullmann and Erland Josephson as Marianne and Johan thirty years after Scenes from a Marriage.