Swedish Cinema Quotes

One of my favorite films is 'Let the Right One In.'

We need more extreme movies in Sweden. Personal projects that are necessarily made for a bigger audience. I think it creates a creative lock-up to have the audience as a goal.

Sometimes I work on film sets. I've done this for 40 years. I always wanted to photograph on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity.

She was obsessed with French and Swedish cinema. I also remember our mother showing us 'Gone With the Wind' very early on. She absolutely loved Vivien Leigh, so it must have been a formative experience for me, thinking, 'Oh, maybe one day I'll be like Vivien Leigh.'

Bergman movies were the most influential. They used to show at Goucher University, which was where my parents used to live. 'Brink of Life' was the first one I ever saw. Three pregnant women in a maternity ward and their misery - I love that. That is what I want to show at my funeral.

An Ingmar Bergman film would probably owe a sizeable bulk of its import and its direction and its quality to the directorial end and to the director because it's uniquely a Bergman film. But that again is not the general - no, that's much more the exception than the rule.

Me sitting down for dinner with Ingmar Bergman felt like a house painter sitting down with Picasso.

I remember those days with Bergman with great nostalgia. We were aware that the films were going to be quite important, and the work felt meaningful.

I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman, What he has left is a legacy greater than any other director.... I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value.

A movie that I've seen probably the most is 'Fanny & Alexander,' the Ingmar Bergman movie. I even dragged my friends to the super long version that had an intermission. I don't know how much they liked me that day.

I own one movie by fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, because I have to. You can't be a movie critic with a collection of six or seven hundred DVDs that includes everything from 'Tokyo Story' to 'Poison Ivy: The New Seduction' and not have a Bergman movie.

I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.

Actually I liked that 'Let the Right One In,' that Swedish vampire movie.

I saw an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 'Fanny and Alexander' at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. The story is just legendary for us Danes, and it was really well done.

Ingmar Bergman is a long way from me, but I admire him. He, too, concentrates a great deal on individuals; and although the individual is what interests him most, we are very far apart. His individuals are very different from mine; his problems are different from mine - but he's a great director. So is Fellini, for that matter.

Ingmar Bergman had a great sense of humor, and he had a very special, characteristic laugh that you always recognized - if he went to watch a theater show, 'Ah! He is here tonight.'

But now I wish I could back to Stockholm to make international films there.

I was six years old when I saw my first Godard movie, eight when I first experienced Bergman. I wanted to be a director when I was fourteen.

My early films were very European based. It was 'As It Is In Heaven,' 'Together,' they were great international successes, but then I did, I think, 60 movies or something.

I'm a big fan of Brian De Palma's 'Sisters,' and I also love 'Let The Right One In.'

In Sweden, only exceptional actresses get major film parts.

There's a recent film, the Swedish movie 'Force Majeure.' I just thought it was brilliant.

Now I want to make it plain that 'The Virgin Spring' must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa.

Bergman's my favorite filmmaker, if I had to choose.

People who would go to an arthouse cinema and watch a Swedish movie and read subtitles... it's a small percentage.