"Originally, I imagined the film as a correspondence between an aging director and a young actress. I began writing it but found it boring before long; it would be more fun to see them.

Photo: Anders Roth
© Stiftelsen Ingmar Bergman

While I wrote, I must have hit a sore nerve or, if you like, an underground vein of water. From my watery unconscious, twisted vines and strange weeds shot up; everything grew into a witch's porridge. Suddenly there appeared the director's former mistress, who is the mother of the young actress. She has been dead for years, and yet she enters the play. On the dark, empty stage of the theater during the quiet hour between four and five in the afternoon, much can return to haunt you. The result of this brewing was a piece of dramatic television that is about life in the theater.[...]

After the Rehearsal was written expressly for the joy of materializing it together with Sven Nykvist, Erland Josephson, and Lena Olin. I have always followed Lena with tenderness and professional interes. Erland has been my friend for fifty years. Sven is Sven. If once in a while I miss working in a film, it really is just the collaboration with Sven that I miss.

So After the rehearsal was meant to be a pleasant title episode on my road toward death. We planned to keep the team small. We would rehearse for three weeks, and Sven would film it. We would work in Filmhuset (Film House) and the set was to be so simple."

- Ingmar Bergman in Images

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