It was the day before Christmas Eve. It was snowing and Stockholm was a white bride waiting for the bells. I was in my apartament preparing Christmas food, the phone called and I answered a bit impatiently. Few people call 7 a' clock in the afternoon the day before Christmas Eve. It was Ingmar Bergman. Together with another writer we were trying to collect signatures to stop the closing of one of Bergman's favorite biographs, Fågel Blå, the Blue Bird. It was there where Ingmar Bergman went as a child to see movies, he sneaked away from home and saw all the biograph showed.
Some times his aunt Anna could follow him, but the most of time he went alone.
We had thirty signatures and had sent the letter to Bergman himself, we knew his signature should add a heavy argument against the closing of th biograph. Stockholm, as many other European cities, is losing his most emblematic high quality biographs. They close down and start again as shopping malls or private clubs. The competence of the television and the rental of videos and DVD make the biographs bleed.
Ingmar Bergman was cathegoric "Don't continue with the collection of signatures, is a dead born cause. I am sure you have more interesting and rewwarding things to do than fight against windmills. I tried myself to help the guy who is the manager of the cinema but gave up. His profile is not longer suitable for a modern city, they say. Modern city! It's a shame Russian films and Surrealistic experimental movies seem not suit longer with the "Modernity"."
I tried to make my point, but we should try anyway, besides, it was his favorite biograph, it was important to feed the nostalgy of all of those who worshipped the places where Bergman grew up and lived.
But Bergman was relentless :" I don't give a damm for nostalgy! What a boring feeling! I told to the Swedish Film Institute if they want to balsamate me and sit me in their foyer as I was the mummie of Lenin they can do it, go ahead, it's surely going to raise the number of tourists and visitors wanting to see me dead there".
Every time I tried to interrupt him, he said "Please, this is the day before Christmas Eve and I love to preach, you know I am the son of a pastor, I love to have a public to predicate to. You are a good listener, let me make the speech."
We talked for one hour, I listened mostly, Ingmar Bergman was warm, funny and engaged. The conversation was a good chess party between two unmatched players, it reminded me of the chess party between Death and the Knight, in The Seventh Seal".
But now he played with the Death and the Death won.