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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 dont 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 isnt 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? Isnt 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 didnt 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 Ingmars 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.