Ingmar Bergman

Close-ups of faces
Close-ups of ticking clocks
Dynamic use of shadows
Frequently casted Gunnar Björnstrand (23 films), Erland Josephson (14 films), Max von Sydow (13 films), Bibi Andersson (13 films), Liv Ullmann (10 films) and Ingrid Thulin (10 films).
Religious themes

His grandmother introduced Ingmar to the cinema and went with him to several shows when he was a little boy, always in secrecy since he wasn't allowed to go to the movies by his strict father.
No relation to Ingrid Bergman, although he was married to another Ingrid, Ingrid Bergman.
One of the favorite filmmakers of Andrei Tarkovsky, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg claimed in an interview to have seen all of Bergman's films.
Among his fellow directors, he listed the three most significant to him as Federico Fellini, Victor Sjöström and Akira Kurosawa.
His Top 11 films are (as presented at Goteborg Film Festival, Sweden in 1994): Der Zirkus (1928), Hafen im Nebel (1938), Der Dirigent (1980), Das Rabenviertel (1963), Die Passion der Jeanne d'Arc (1928). Der Fuhrmann des Todes (1921), Rashomon - Das Lustwäldchen (1950), Das Lied der Straße (1954), Boulevard der Dämmerung (1950), Die Bleierne Zeit (1981), Andrej Rubljow (1966).

The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly, exacting mistress.
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.
I hope I never get old so I get religious.
In a quarrel with one of my sons, I said, "I know I've been a lousy father". He said, "A father? You haven't been a father at all!"
[on Orson Welles] For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane (1941), which I have a copy of, is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable.