People ask what are my intentions with my films— my aims. It is a
difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive
answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth
as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not
quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be.
There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by
lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came
from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and
together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They
worked until the building was completed— master builders, artists,
labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained
anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of
Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant
in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative
drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an
umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and
degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and
his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being
more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,'
'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his
case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished
invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has
become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope
as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his
isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we
finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our
loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that
we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into
each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no
longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's
whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the
general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be
one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to
make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil— or perhaps a saint— out of
stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that
counts.-Ingmar Bergman