Bergman gave an interview on Sunday. His opinons about film makers,
especially Antonioni should cause some discussion. I have to say I really
agree with his opinion of Citizen Kane, which I've always regarded as theatre
and not film. (Has anyone see Szabo's Colonel Redl which is very similar to
Citizen Kane and makes Citizen Kane look like a kiddies film?)


Excerpts from an interview with Ingmar Bergman with Jan Aghed in Swedish
morning paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet, Sunday June 17, 2002.

Background: For many years, Ingmar Bergman has been residing on the
remote Swedish island of Farö. The small island only has a few people
living there all-year, and Bergman is one of them. On the island, he also
has his own movie theatre, where he often has private screenings, since
he's so far off from any major city and wants to keep up with the new
interesting releases. As a token of appreciation for all he's done for
Swedish cinema during the years, all the distributors and theatre chains
in the country occassionally send him reels to watch. Bergman might be
old, but he's still very interested in new films, and apprently he
watches a lot.

About Orson Welles:
"Bergman: For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's
dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of - is all the critics' darling,
always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore.
Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that
movie's got is absolutely unbelievable.
Aghed: How about The Magnificent Ambersons?
Bergman: Nah. Also terribly boring. And I've never liked Welles as an
actor, because he's not really an actor. In Hollywood you have two
categories, you talk about actors and personalities. Welles was an
enormous personality, but when he plays Othello, everything goes down the
drain, you see, that's when he's croaks. In my eyes he's an infinitely
overrated filmmaker."

About Michelangelo Antonioni:
"Bergman: He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the
rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La
Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young
Jeanne Moreau. In my collection I have a copy of Il Grido, and damn what
a boring movie it is. So devilishly sad, I mean. You know, Antonioni
never really learned the trade. He concentrated on single images, never
realising that film is a rhythmic flow of images, a movement. Sure, there
are brilliant moments in his films. But I don't feel anything for
L'Avventura, for example. Only indifference. I never understood why
Antonioni was so incredibly applauded. And I thought his muse Monica
Vitti was a terrible actress."

About Federico Fellini:
"Bergman: We were supposed to collaborate once, and along with Kurosawa
make one love story each for a movie produced by Dino de Laurentiis. I
flew down to Rome with my script and spent a lot of time with Fellini
while we waited for Kurosawa, who finally couldn't leave Japan because of
his health, so the project went belly-up. Fellini was about to finish
Satyricon. I spent a lot of time in the studio and saw him work. I loved
him both as a director and as a person, and I still watch his movies,
like La Strada and that childhood rememberance - what's that called
again?
The interviewer has also seen the movie several times, but just now the
title slips his mind. Bergman laughs delightedly.
Bergman: Great that you're also a bit senile! That pleases me.
(Later the same day, several hours after the interview, the phone rings.
It's Bergman. 'AMARCORD!' he shouts.)"

About Francois Truffaut:
"Bergman: I liked Truffaut a lot, I've felt a lot of admiration for his
way to address the audience, and his storytelling. La nuit américaine
[Day for Night] is
adorable, and another film I like to see is L'Enfant sauvage, with its
fine humanism."

About Jean-Luc Godard:
"Bergman: I've never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt
constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically
uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He's made
his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin/Féminin, was shot
here in Sweden. It was mindnumbingly boring."

About Andrei Tarkovsky:
"Late one evening in 1971, Bergman and his friend and director Kjell
Grede by pure coincidence stumbled upon a copy of Andrei Rublev in a
screening room at Svensk Filmindustri. They saw it without any subtitles.
He ranks it to be one of his most startling and unforgettable movie
experiences ever."

About modern American cinema:
"Bergman: Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven
Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased
making films, and Steven Soderbergh - they all have something to say,
they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking
process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of
examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and
Magnolia."