Vitro Nasu

“Harriet Andersson in Monika is one of the miracles of cinema. She embodies once and for all youth, beauty, freedom, rebellion. I see her as pure poetry. When I was shooting Cold Water I was inspired by one shot in Monika, when she runs holding the piece of meat she’s just stolen.” Olivier Assayas from Bampfa

Assayas on Bergman (I don’t think this book is translated into English.)

When I did Conversations with Bergman it was an extraordinary experience for a young film-maker to be confronted with one of the great masters. (via)

Olivier Assayas

For me, the defining moment with Bergman was when I made my second film, A Winter’s Child, and realised that what interested me in film was filming actors. I became fascinated with the process of what was happening on the face. I had a vague notion that this had something to do with Bergman(via)

BERGMAN—THE NEED TO TRUST ONE’S EMOTIONS by Olivier Assayas and Stig Björkman

Marie Nyrod and Olivier Assayas on Women in Bergman’s film.

Continuing with Melvyn Bragg, Marie Nyrod and Olivier Assayas talking about their meetings with the great man and sharing their love of his work on Youtube here.

To me, the Bergman style began to gel with Summer with Monika. Before that, the films he was making were like very good American films. But there seemed to be some kind of break with Monika, and after that it drifted into the emergence of that great poetic style. Woody Allen, Back from the Cold, Guardian.

See another clip from The Summer with Monika.

Harriet Andersson and I have worked together all through the years. She is unusually strong but vulnerable person, with a streak of brilliance in her gifts. Her relationship to the camera is straight and sensual. She is also technically superb and can move like lightening from the most powerful empathy to conveying emotions: her humour is astringent but never cynical: she is a lovely person and one of my dearest friends. – The Magic Lantern, Ingmar Bergman page 170