Ingmar Bergman 

Sweden
 

"Actually, as a whole, I would have preferred to work much more anonymously, but I suppose it is impossible in a media society," he confided to his friend, Finnish author-director-producer Jorn Donner, in an interview which will be aired by Swedish pubcaster SVT1 on 14 July, 1998 – Bergman's 80th birthday.

Yet he admitted that he did enjoy the drive from the Elysees Palais in Central Paris to a chartered plane in Le Bourget airport, after he had received the French Legion of Honour from then-President Francois Mitterand. With a police escort the ride was done in nine minutes. "Then I felt indescribably happy at being famous."

In the 90-minute programme, Ingmar Bergman about Life and Work, the Swedish director talked about his injurious upbringing in a home of "lies and dissimulation. 

"I have spent infinite time trying to clean up from my adolescence, in an attempt to keep what was good after all."

And what was good was definitely Uncle Carl, the main character in Larmar och gor sig till, depicted by Borje Ahlstedt. "Uncle Carl, I knew well. He was my favourite. That he was regarded as having 'weak nerves' as it was called in those days (1925) lacked importance. He was playful and inventive, and treated me as a coeval. Besides, he had also mastered a virtually unlimited repertoire of magic tricks," Bergman recalled.

While still head of SVT Drama, managing director Ingrid Dahlberg, of the Dramaten – Stockholm's Royal Theatre, where Bergman is still active – signed him to direct the play which is based on a story he found among the papers left by his uncle at his death. She had previously produced most of his work for television.

"At a time when you most often have to persuade people to do something, it is refreshing to meet a man who is so creative, who has an enormous urge for action, and who is always so positive at work," she said.

Set at well-known Bergman locations, the story follows Uncle Carl – rosy-cheeked inventor Carl Ekerblom, a Franz Schubert admirer – who is having a passionate, but rather turbulent relationship with Pauline Thibault (Marie Richardson), of whom the writer-director had "a blurry recollection." At 54, he is a patient on the psychiatric ward of Akademiska Hospitalet in Uppsala, committed to mental care for having allegedly attempted to beat his fiancee to death. Another patient is professor Osvald Vogler (Erland Josephson), and together they start a film project: the living talkie. Before long they are on tour.

With his birthday coming up, Bergman is a natural focal point of Stockholm's European Capital of the Year agenda. His career and 40-year assignment with the Dramaten is marked by weekly programmes at the Fagel Bla Theatre, as well as presentations of his work for stage, film, television, radio, and his literary production. Besides the Donner interview, conducted during three days last November at Bergman's home on the island of Faro, SVT1 will transmit eight feature films, three television plays and two documentaries. Bergman has himself made the selection which will broadcast from 31 May. Jorn Rossing Jensen