Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter. He is considered one of the greatest and most important filmmakers in the history of cinema, most notably as a prominent figure of both European film industry and Swedish cinema. His films have been described as "profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul.
I wanted to make a spiritual thriller, an existential thriller, and I thought the elements that Bresson and Bergman and Dreyer and Ozu brought to the spiritual film could be transmuted into a thriller that would keep the audience on the edge of their seat.