Read Online Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert by Roger Ebert - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Roger Ebert
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you know, because suddenly you have the feeling there was no time in between. The feeling when you wake up, got to the studio, see the rushes, is still exactly the same. Of course, in 1945, I was more scared, more insecure-but the tension and the passion, and the feeling of surprise every day-that's the same. I solved the problems, or didn't solve them in exactly the same way.
"The artistic problems are already solved when you write the script. But then there are the technical problems. The shooting schedule, the lab, a sick actor ... and it has to do with your own conditions, too. If you feel well, or depressed-you are not a machine. And yet you must be on top of things for nine or ten weeks-if you've not slept well, or you're suffering from lust ... I call those technical problems."
English is not his best language, but he speaks it well enough. Growing up before the Second World War, he was taught German, like all Swedish schoolchildren. As he speaks, he seems to have it all clear inside, what he wants to say. He accepts questions gravely but without a great deal of interest. It's less of an interview than an opportunity to share in his thought process. I asked him about the recent change in the direction of his work, away from despair and a little toward affirmation.
"Well," he said, "you mature. You grow up mentally, emotionally, and it's not a straight line, it's more like the growing of a tree. On the island where I live, the trees always have a strong wind from the northeast, blowing so hard that they grow almost flat against the ground. It's that way with people. You think you're in control, but really you're being changed every day by everything around you.
"Perhaps, someday, I'll stop growing. But I hope that I'll understand it myself, and, in that moment, stop making films. You know, filming and directing on the stage are both the same in the sense that you try to get in touch with other human beings. There's always that hope. But if you have the feeling you have nothing more to tell, to say-it's wise to stop making pictures. You can still work in the theater, because there you're working with big men-Shakespeare, Strindberg, Moliere-so if you're old and tired and sick, at least you still have your experience to share with other actors, you can help them put across the play. To make a film is something else. If you have nothing to say, it's time to stop, because the film is you."
You talk about getting in touch with other people, I said. In so many of your films, that seems to be the subject-people trying to make contact.
"That is exactly right. If I believe in anything, I believe in the sudden relationship, the sudden contact between two human beings. When we grow up, we suddenly feel we are completely alone. We find substitutes for loneliness-but this feeling of a certain contact, a certain instant understanding between two people, that's the best thing in life. It has nothing to do with sex, by the way."
And so, at the end of Scenes from a Marriage, when the man and woman have been divorced for years, you have them holding each other "in a cottage in the middle of the night somewhere in the world."
He nodded. "You know," he said, "I was very surprised by the success of that film, because I wrote it only from my own experience. It took three months to make, but a lifetime to experience. Very strange.
"I was on my island with my wife, and I was preparing a stage production, and j ust for fun I started to write some dialogues about marriage. I started with the scene where he tells her he will go away. Well, I always write by hand, and I asked my wife, who is the only person in the world who can read my handwriting, to type it up. She found it amusing. Then I wrote the fifth scene-even more amusing!-and then the first. I could have written twenty-four more.
"But I had no idea of what would happen. No feeling of what to do with these scenes. Perhaps I could make some sort of program for television. I
"The artistic problems are already solved when you write the script. But then there are the technical problems. The shooting schedule, the lab, a sick actor ... and it has to do with your own conditions, too. If you feel well, or depressed-you are not a machine. And yet you must be on top of things for nine or ten weeks-if you've not slept well, or you're suffering from lust ... I call those technical problems."
English is not his best language, but he speaks it well enough. Growing up before the Second World War, he was taught German, like all Swedish schoolchildren. As he speaks, he seems to have it all clear inside, what he wants to say. He accepts questions gravely but without a great deal of interest. It's less of an interview than an opportunity to share in his thought process. I asked him about the recent change in the direction of his work, away from despair and a little toward affirmation.
"Well," he said, "you mature. You grow up mentally, emotionally, and it's not a straight line, it's more like the growing of a tree. On the island where I live, the trees always have a strong wind from the northeast, blowing so hard that they grow almost flat against the ground. It's that way with people. You think you're in control, but really you're being changed every day by everything around you.
"Perhaps, someday, I'll stop growing. But I hope that I'll understand it myself, and, in that moment, stop making films. You know, filming and directing on the stage are both the same in the sense that you try to get in touch with other human beings. There's always that hope. But if you have the feeling you have nothing more to tell, to say-it's wise to stop making pictures. You can still work in the theater, because there you're working with big men-Shakespeare, Strindberg, Moliere-so if you're old and tired and sick, at least you still have your experience to share with other actors, you can help them put across the play. To make a film is something else. If you have nothing to say, it's time to stop, because the film is you."
You talk about getting in touch with other people, I said. In so many of your films, that seems to be the subject-people trying to make contact.
"That is exactly right. If I believe in anything, I believe in the sudden relationship, the sudden contact between two human beings. When we grow up, we suddenly feel we are completely alone. We find substitutes for loneliness-but this feeling of a certain contact, a certain instant understanding between two people, that's the best thing in life. It has nothing to do with sex, by the way."
And so, at the end of Scenes from a Marriage, when the man and woman have been divorced for years, you have them holding each other "in a cottage in the middle of the night somewhere in the world."
He nodded. "You know," he said, "I was very surprised by the success of that film, because I wrote it only from my own experience. It took three months to make, but a lifetime to experience. Very strange.
"I was on my island with my wife, and I was preparing a stage production, and j ust for fun I started to write some dialogues about marriage. I started with the scene where he tells her he will go away. Well, I always write by hand, and I asked my wife, who is the only person in the world who can read my handwriting, to type it up. She found it amusing. Then I wrote the fifth scene-even more amusing!-and then the first. I could have written twenty-four more.
"But I had no idea of what would happen. No feeling of what to do with these scenes. Perhaps I could make some sort of program for television. I
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