"Anyone who makes films must have a goal before his eyes: namely, to try to get as close to the viewer as possible, to affect him as deeply as possible. What I call technique is knowing exactly how to affect the viewer. That's the crux of the matter. All the rest is secondary. And it is a matter of talent."

Universally regarded as one of the greatest masters of modern cinema, Ingmar Bergman has often concerned himself with spiritual and psychological conflicts. His work has evolved in distinct stages over four decades, while his visual style - intense, intimate, complex - has explored the vicissitudes of passion with a mesmerising cinematic rhetoric. His prolific output tends to return to and elaborate on recurrent images, subjects and techniques. Like the Baroque composers, Bergman works on a small scale, finding invention in theme and variation.

Born Ernst Ingmar Bergman on 14 July 1918 at Uppsala (Sweden), Ingmar Bergman's mature cinema provokes the viewer into an intimate engagement in which a range of uncomfortable feelings are opened up, shared and laid bare. And this often occurs, quite literally, face-to-face.

As a director, Bergman favours intuition over intellect, and chooses to be unaggressive in dealing with actors. Bergman sees himself as having a great responsibility toward them, whom he views as collaborators in a psychologically vulnerable position. He states that a director must be both honest and supportive to allow others their best work.

Bergman usually writes his own scripts, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he views as somewhat tedious. His earlier films are carefully structured, and are either based on plays or written with other authors, usually as a matter of convenience. Bergman states that in his later works, when his characters sometimes start wanting to do things different from what he had intended, he lets them, calling the results "disastrous" when he doesn't. Throughout his career, Bergman has increasingly let his actors improvise their dialogue. In his latest films, he has written just the ideas behind the dialogue, keeping in mind the general direction he thinks it should take.

"For me a film's suggestiveness lies in a combination of rhythm and faces, tensions and relaxations of tension. For me, the lightning of the image decides everything." Bergman states. Bergman indeed did create in his movies such suggestive images that were able to express emotions more than a thousand words.