49 Fun Facts About Ingmar Bergman

During which calamity is The Seventh Seal set?

The plague is sweeping the medieval countryside as the knight Antonius Block returns from the Crusades, and Death arrives to claim him.

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

Lutheran minister Erik Bergman, later chaplain to the royal court, raised his son in a strict parsonage; Ingmar said he lost his faith at eight.

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, a stage actor and director, played the white-faced, black-cowled Death; the closing Dance of Death silhouette became one of cinema's most recognisable images.

How many days did Bergman have to shoot The Seventh Seal?

Thirty-five days was the schedule, on a budget of about $150,000; Bergman shot mostly at the Filmstaden studios with a few days on the coast at Hovs Hallar.

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

Faro, north of Gotland, became his home after he first filmed there in 1961; he died there in his sleep at 89 and lies in the island's churchyard.

Which actress was Bergman's partner from 1965 to 1970 and mother of his daughter Linn?

Liv Ullmann, the Norwegian actress at the centre of Bergman's late films, was his partner through the late 1960s; their daughter Linn Ullmann, born in 1966, became a novelist.

Which 1966 Bergman film stars Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann?

He later named it, with Cries and Whispers, as the film in which he pushed the envelope of filmmaking.

Which veteran Swedish director starred as the ageing professor in Wild Strawberries?

Victor Sjostrom, the silent-era master of The Phantom Carriage, played Professor Isak Borg at 78 in what proved to be his final screen role.

How many of Bergman's films won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film?

Three of his films took the award: The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and Fanny and Alexander (1983).

How many Academy Awards did Fanny and Alexander win?

Four Oscars went to the film at the 1984 ceremony: Best Foreign Language Film, Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design.

How long is the full television version of Fanny and Alexander?

312 minutes is the length of the television version, first broadcast on Swedish television in 1984; the theatrical cut released in 1982 runs 188 minutes.

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, a maternity-ward chamber drama, brought Bergman the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1958, while its lead actresses shared the Best Actress award.

Which three early-1960s films are usually grouped as Bergman's trilogy on faith and doubt?

Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence were labelled a trilogy on 'God's silence' by Bergman himself in 1963, though he later dismissed the grouping as a 'Schnaps-Idee'.

During the making of which film did Bergman say he came to terms with having lost his faith?

Winter Light, his 1963 study of a doubting pastor, was where Bergman said he finally settled his own religious question; the loss of faith itself, he said, dated from age eight.

Which colour dominates the design of Cries and Whispers?

Crimson walls, carpets and fades to red fill the manor house; Bergman said he imagined the inside of the soul as a moist red membrane, and the film's Oscar-winning photography made the colour its signature.

Who was Bergman's best-known cinematographer, later borrowed by Woody Allen for Crimes and Misdemeanors?

Sven Nykvist, Bergman's cinematographer from the 1960s onward, won two Oscars for their work together; Allen also used him on Another Woman and Celebrity.

What was Bergman rehearsing when arrested for tax evasion at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1976?

Strindberg's The Dance of Death was in rehearsal when two plainclothes policemen led Bergman away on 30 January 1976; he suffered a breakdown and was hospitalised.

How did the prosecutor describe the case when he dropped the charges against Bergman in March 1976?

Like charging a man who stole his own car was prosecutor Anders Nordenadler's verdict when he dropped the case in March 1976; Bergman still shut his Swedish productions and went abroad.

To which city did Bergman move in self-imposed exile after the tax affair?

Munich became his base: he directed at the Residenztheater from 1977 into the 1980s and made The Serpent's Egg and From the Life of the Marionettes there.

What was the name of the production company Bergman founded in the late 1960s?

Cinematograph was the production company Bergman founded in the late 1960s; it made his later Swedish films and its finances were at the heart of the 1976 tax investigation.

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.

At what age did Bergman become the youngest theatrical manager in Europe, at Helsingborg City Theatre?

Twenty-six was his age when he took charge at Helsingborg in 1944, the same year his first screenplay reached the screen; he revived the struggling theatre with a young company.

How many times was Bergman married?

Five marriages, the last to Ingrid von Rosen, who died of stomach cancer in 1995; all but the last ended in divorce.

How many children did Bergman have in all?

Nine children in all, born between 1943 and 1966 to six different mothers, all but one of whom he married.

Which concert pianist was Bergman's fourth wife?

Kabi Laretei, an Estonian-born concert pianist, was married to Bergman from 1959 to 1969; their son Daniel Bergman became a film director.

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

Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian director of L'Avventura and Blow-Up, died in Rome at 94 on the same day, 30 July 2007.

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, published in English as The Magic Lantern, is his 1987 memoir; Images: My Life in Film followed in 1990 as a second autobiographical book.

At what age did Bergman spend a summer in Germany where he attended a Nazi rally and saw Hitler?

Sixteen-year-old Bergman was an exchange student in Thuringia in the summer of 1934, when his host family took him to a rally at Weimar; he later admitted to years of admiring Hitler.

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

The Touch, starring Bibi Andersson and Elliott Gould as a Swedish housewife and her American lover, was Bergman's first film in English and a rare critical failure.

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

Ingrid Bergman, no relation to the director, played the pianist Charlotte in her final feature film, earning her seventh Oscar nomination; it was shot in Norway.

Which Mozart opera did Bergman film for television in 1975?

The Magic Flute, sung in Swedish as Trollflöjten, was staged for television in a replica of the Drottningholm court theatre, with Håkan Hagegård as Papageno.

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

The conjurer was his own word: the cover story, headed 'I Am a Conjurer', quoted Bergman on cinema as a trick played on the eye's persistence of vision.

What did Bergman jokingly call his 'most lasting contribution to the history of theatre'?

The private lavatories he secured at his theatres mattered because of his lifelong nervous stomach, a 'calamity as foolish as it is humiliating' that he described in his memoirs.

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 festival introduced the Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award in 2016?

The Gothenburg Film Festival created the award in 2016 with the Bergman Foundation and the Bergman Center on his home island; it honours a director's first feature.

Which of these Bergman films was released in 1953?

Summer with Monika, with Harriet Andersson as the free-spirited Monika, reached cinemas in February 1953; its nude scenes made it notorious abroad and a touchstone for the French New Wave.

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

Uppsala was his birthplace on 14 July 1918; his mother Karin Åkerblom was a nurse of Walloon descent, and the family soon moved to Stockholm.

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

Wild Strawberries, Isak Borg's road trip through memory and dream, took Berlin's Golden Bear in June 1958 and later an Oscar nomination for Bergman's original screenplay.

Which three of his own films did Bergman say he held in the highest regard, in 2004 TV interviews?

Winter Light, Persona and Cries and Whispers were his choices in the 2004 conversations with Marie Nyreröd, filmed at his island home and released as the documentary Bergman Island.

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; Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson worked with him there on stage before becoming his screen regulars.

The Serpent's Egg (1977), Bergman's second English-language film, was a US co-production with which country?

West Germany was the partner: Dino De Laurentiis produced with a German company, and Bergman shot the 1920s Berlin story on studio sets in Bavaria.

How many Bergman features did the Criterion Collection gather in its 2018 centenary Blu-ray box set?

39 films fill the set, titled Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, arranged like a festival programme rather than chronologically, from his 1946 debut Crisis to his final television film of 2003.

Which Swedish prime minister pleaded with Bergman not to abandon working in Sweden after the tax affair?

Bergman closed his Fårö studio and vowed never to work in Sweden again, though he softened by 1978.