(3 of 3)
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 didnt 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. Its 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.