Photo: Bengt Wanselius
© Bengt Wanselius

Around this time, Bergman was announcing his intention to round off his career in the theatre, yet various projects conspired to intervene. Per Olov Enquist's play and its theme about the creative process skapandets villkor, a theme which had occupied Bergman throughout his career, affected the director strongly. Yet this was not the only attraction. There were also strong autobiographical links between  Bergman and the characters in The Image Makers, including the fact that Bergman himself had directed  Victor Sjöström in Wild Strawberries.

Photo: Bengt Wanselius
© Bengt Wanselius

In an interview with Henrik Sjögren, Bergman describes his reaction on coming across the play at the Royal Dramatic Theatre: "I thought: this is something I know about, something I'm familiar with, for one thing I've met all these people, some of them are very close to me, and for another, nobody else know exactly what it looked like in the Filmstaden studios. The Phantom Carriage also happens to be one of the cornerstones of my life in the cinema. I took the play in my hand, went down to the head of the theatre (Ingrid Dahlberg) and said: I'm the only one who knows how this should be done. So I got precisely the ensemble I wanted."

Photo: Bengt Wanselius
© Bengt Wanselius

In Ingmar Bergman's artistic life there has always been a strong interplay between cinema and the theatre. His work in both genres has had a cross fertilisation effect both in terms of theme and expression. In many of his films, the capacity of the theatre to create plausible lies and the creations of the actors at the borderline between truth and lies are a metaphor for life and the art of being human. Typical examples are Sawdust and Tinsel, The Magician, and In the Presence of a Clown. In The Image Makers, film and the issues surrounding the making of a film move into the theatre for the first time.

Bergman subsequently went on to make a television version of The Image Makers. Several critics were of the opinion that in this version, the interplay between Elin Klinga as Tora Teje and Anita Björk as Selma Lagerlöf had been further refined. The character of Tora Teje was slightly more subtle, creating a better balance between the two women and revealing further nuances in the text.

Sources 

Bernt Olsson och Ingemar Algulin, Litteraturens historia i Sverige, (Norstedts Förlag, 1987).
Henrik Sjögren, Lek och raseri: Ingmar Bergmans teater 1938-2002 (Carlssons Bokförlag 2002).