by Fergus Daly

Liv Ullmann was in Dublin recently for the Irish premiere of her third feature Private Confessions. Fergus Daly spoke to the great actress about her new career behind the camera.

Von Trier, Kaurismaki, August, Axel, and now Ullman. To name five leading contemporary film-makers might not seem like much for a geographical area as large as Scandinavia but it can seem like an abundance when one considers th quality of the product. The Irish premiere of Liv Ullmann's third feature Private Confessions at the first women's film festival in Dublin in December proved the Norwegian actor-director worthy of her place in that select group. Although the odd interesting Norwegan film has surfaced over the years, Ullmann has now finally put her beloved country on the map in film-making terms. Of her three features, all of which she has contributed to scripting (including turning Bergman's novelistic draught of Private Confessions into a shooting script which is no mean feat), two (Softie and Private Confessions) are outstanding aesthetic successes, the other (Kristin Lavransdatter - the kind of medieval pageant only a Bresson or Rohmer could've done anything with) is the most commercially successful film ever shown in Norway.

By turns witty and intense, Liv Ullmann is a pleasure to interview. Her approach to her art is very much in the tradition of the great European auteurs of the past, awash with references to painting, literature and music. For many who developed a love of cinema through '70's tv, screenings of (mostly) European works, Liv Ullmann's was the face that stayed in one's imagination - her nine films with Bergman and in particular Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Cries and Whispers and Scenes from a Marriage, both stimulated and delighted our somnambulent adolescence. Eternally assosciated with Bergman in many minds, it is a very welcome development that Ullmann has now in her '50's changed direction in her art, a shift which on the evidence so far holds much promise. What a moment it must have been for Ullmann when, along with Bibi Anderson, Harriet Anderson and Lena Olin ( each of them at one time Berman's actrice fetiche), she walked on stage at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes last May, onto a platform full of previous Palme d'Or winners (28 men and 1 woman) to stand alongside her own and Bergman's daughter Linn who accepted the Palme des Palmes d'Or on behalf of her father. "I loved that, and she did it so nicely. It was so good and I think it was good in a way that Ingmar didn't come because all these women came on stage and it wasn't therefore only a stage full of men before we walked on, besides Jane Caryien there were only men." The response to her own film at the same festival was by her own account "incredible ... many of the film reviewers said it should have been in competition but when the selectors saw my film - at the time I didn't want it in competition which was stupid - it was 3 hours and 20 minutes and they said 'we can't show that'. Now I think if it had been in competition it would've had a chance of winning." It is a similar story when it comes to the forthcoming Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It wasn't part of the Swedish selection because the tv studio didn't offer it. this is unfortunate because there again I think it would have a very good chance." One would be tempted to agree if one wasn't aware of the appaling list of past winners of that award.

The reference to Liv Ullmann in 'The Sunday Tribune' recently as a 'screen goddess' would no doubt amuse her now but nevertheless it is hard to underestimate her standing in world terms in the early '70's. Tempted to Hollywood in th emiddle of her stint with Bergman (but after their personal breakup) she was soon on the cover of 'Time' magazine, summoned to the White House having been judged the most suitable escort to accompany Kissinger to a grand ball as well as finding herself feted in Beverly Hills. Although none of her American films was particularly successful from an artistic point-of-view, her time in the US provided her with the international profile which later led to her appointment as good-will ambassador for UNICEF.

As an actress Liv Ullmann brought to women's roles the kind of physical intensity and facial intelligence (Bergman spoke of her ability to put feeling into any part of of her body) which was very much in line with American actresses such as Gena Rowlands and which coincided with the rise of the women's movement, although most of these films continued to be made by men. Her current retirement from acting is an inestimable loss only partly compensated for by her move to the other side of the camera.

But after 40 years of acting, and though she is certain that she "would never want to go back to acting" the move has also had its heart-breaking side". Take Erland Josephson, he's the best, he's so intelligent and like my best girlfriend - we will tell each other everything- we've done so many films together as actors. So when it came for me to direct him ( in her first film Sofie in 1992) I was nervous. "How is he going to look at me as a director." the noment we started, without us knowing it, the roles were shifted. There he was on the so0fa with Ghita Norby, with a woman, having fun, whispering about me just like we used to, and when I came over they would sit up. I wasn't part of it anymore. I was on the other side and I was vyer envious because I lost that kind of friend during the filming. But it's really weird. They trusted me and they knew that I thought they were creative and they knew how thrilled I was when they had ideas." From the outset Ullmann brought her own idiosyncratic working methods onto the set. "I know that it's very important that in between takes the actors have something to inspire them and that they feel they are part of greatness. Classical music gives you this and all of my actresses immediately got a walkman and a lot of classical music. At first they thought I was crazy but I tell you, when I said 'camera' you never had people thinking about other things, you didn't have someone coming from over there (gestures). I gave it to the main actors because it's very hard to keep your concentration." It should be added that Ullmann's use of classical music in her films, From Bach to Gorecki is striking.

Ullmann's cinema stems from a meditative or reflective attitude. It is what detractors often term 'slow'. If by this they mean that the passing of time becomes a palpable element of the film-going experience, then they are correct. Several years ago, Ullmann appeared in the documentary Pictures of Europe about the future of European cinema denouncing the speed of the Hollywood product which subordinates every other element of cinema's potential to plot-resolving activity. In Dublin she continued to distance herself from what she terms "cut/cut/cut" moives and to promote cinema that "still has the rhythm of the soul, of the heartbeat." Ullmann's use of spiritual terminology and the genuine belief that clearly directs it may come as a bit of a shock to those who expect her to be a Bergman clone and to have long ago followed the Swedish master through his three stages journey from believer to agnostic to atheist. not only would it it be a misconception to see Ullmann as merely her former lover's epizone but this account of the trajectory of his relation to God isn;t one she concurs with. To her Bergman remains a believer even if it is in spite of himself. As she told Helen Meaney in the public interview which followed the screening of Private Confessions to me life is where your soul leads you if you want to listen to your soul. That is what makes life exciting and wondrous and frightening and everything. I believe in the soul. I believe that each individual is a unique person and we all can do something incredible just by waking and looking out at nature, the change of seasons. I believe in that and I want that to reflect who I am and you don't have to be a film director to do that but it does make the journey of life more interesting. I am God's creation. But Ingmar says 'You have to stop talking about this film as religious. I'm not religious. It's the priest who's religious and not me'. I find that so beautiful too. He spends his whole life discussing with God 'Are you there?' denying it and saying Yes to it and I think he chose me to make this because he knows I said yes." Whatever one makes of this declaration of faith ( on behalf of her self and someone else) it helps situate Liv Ullmann's film in a long Scandinavian tradition of film-makers to which Bergman also belongs but which transcends them both. Dreyer is the key name in this regard. Beloved of Bergman, of Von Trier, of Karismaki, it was Dreyer who brought to perfection a kind of cinema steeped in the Lutheran tradition adn concerned with questions of individual choice and responsibility, obsessive demands for truth, familial and institutional impositions of morality and often mystical means of transcending these moral codes. Even the painterly style of Liv Ullmann's films reminds one of Dreyer's chamber pieces. As she told me "I go by painting. For all of my frames for Private Confessions, Sofie and very much also Kristin, I went to books, books on painting. In particular the Danish painter Hammershoi."....