In pictures: on set with Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman poses between takes of his first feature, Crisis, which stars Inga Landgré as Nelly, a young woman living in the care of her foster mother. When Nelly writes to her birth mother, and is introduced to her lover, the greener grass of financial riches, handsome men and a new dress for the charity ball spark controversy and jealousy.

The cast of Port of Call listen intently to the young Bergman’s directions for this early film in which love triumphs over obstacles. It follows the relationship of Berit (Nine-Christine Jönsson) and Gösta (Bengt Eklund) after she returns from reform school to live with her mother and he from years at sea. The threat of being sent back to reform school looms heavily over the couple after Berit’s friend has an illegal abortion and they refuse to aid the police. 

In one of the director’s lighter films, Monika (Harriet Andersson) and Harry (Lars Ekborg) leave their stagnant and dull lives in Stockholm to take off for an idyllic summer of boating, dancing and sunbathing in the nude – though the weight of reality later interrupts their youthful ideals. Before the pair run away together they spend the night in Harry’s father’s boat. Pictured here is the set built to shoot the cramped boat interior, with Bergman seen lining up the shot. 

Bergman directs Bengt Ekerot, playing the personification of Death, in what is arguably the director’s most famous film, The Seventh Seal, based on his own play Wood Painting. Death appears to the knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), who is returning to Sweden after a crusade. Not wanting to die just yet, he challenges Death to an ongoing game of chess. The game, and Death, loom throughout the film, a constant reminder to Block of what is inescapable.

Early along his journey, Block encounters a young woman accused of having contact with the Devil and condemned to be burned at the stake. He asks her to tell him about life after death but to his dismay discovers the woman is mad. This photo shows a fire engine close by the burning bonfire, its ladder used to capture the scene from above.

Bergman’s first film in colour, and one of his few comedies, All These Women plays out like a pastiche of Fellini’s 8½ (1963). Like Citizen Kane (1941), it’s presented in multiple flashbacks as biographer Cornelius (Jarl Kulle) attends the funeral of esteemed cellist Felix and learns about his life from Felix’s wife and many mistresses. In this film, Bergman, pictured here behind boxes of dynamite, reaches levels of absurdity not usually associated with his work. 

After freezing on stage in the middle of a performance, actor Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) is left mute and spends the night in hospital. She goes to recuperate in a secluded lodge, with nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) as her personal carer. As time passes between them, Alma is left projecting her ideas of identity and self-image on to the silent actor, asking are our ideas of self what we see or what others see? Here, a high-spirited Bergman looks through the camera with the two leads. 

Shot in vivid, high contrast black and white, Persona – another of Bergman’s most well-known films – is rigidly constructed, making obvious the mechanisms of filmmaking without detracting from its haunting compositions and allusive narrative. It’s difficult to imagine Persona working as effectively in colour, but this behind-the-scenes photo provides us with a glimpse of that alternative possibility. The image shows him talking to Ullmann on a rock in Fårö, the shooting location and working home for the director, which has since become known as ‘Bergman Island’.

Into the later stage of his career, Bergman began to introduce colour as an effective tool for his craft. In Cries and Whispers he sets the 19th-century narrative of four women – three sisters and their servant, who, at different stages in their lives, attempt to find care and success regarding marriage, illness and youth – in a mansion decorated with crimson red walls. The spare and expansive rooms hold dominion over the characters, and this wide behind-the-scenes shot provides us with a glimpse at how Bergman was able to situate the camera and shoot from inside the building itself without losing its spacial qualities. 

Ingrid Bergman stars alongside Liv Ullmann in Autumn Sonata, a film about the complexities of love, its presence and absence, truths and lies. After Charlotte (Bergman), a celebrated concert pianist, is left bewildered and alone at the loss of her long-term partner, she is invited to stay with her married daughter Eva (Ullmann). Over the duration of Charlotte’s visit, they are both assured and repulsed by each other in turn. 

Bergman was no stranger to creating lasting relationships with the recurring cast members of his work, both professional and personal. On set, not all things are doom and gloom. In this uncharacteristic photograph, he cries out in exaggerated pain following a pretend bite on the hand from Ullmann (in their ninth collaboration as actor and director).

Bergman continues his examination of the theme of performance and the lives of actors in After the Rehearsal, which centres on theatre director Henrik Vogler (Erland Josephson) working on his fifth production of Strindberg’s A Dream Play. During production he flirts and converses with his star, the young and dedicated Anna (Lena Olin), which sparks memories of his turbulent relationship with Anna’s alcoholic mother, Rakel (Ingrid Thulin).

Ingmar Bergman Volume 4, the fourth of our Blu-ray collections of his films, is out now.