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I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.
Ingmar Bergman
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects on the discomfort artists often feel when confronting their own work.

Ingmar Bergman's quote reveals the emotional turmoil that creators experience when they view their own films. He describes a sense of anxiety and sadness that arises from a critical self-reflection, suggesting that the creative process can be intensely personal and often leads to dissatisfaction with one's own artistic output.

Themes

ArtEmotionsSelf-CriticismCreativityAnxiety

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the struggles of filmmakers, this quote can illustrate the complexity of their emotional responses to their own work.

More from Ingmar Bergman

To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.
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I'd prostitute my talents if it would further my cause, steal if there was no way out, killing my friends or anyone else if it would help my art.
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I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.
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To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure. It's not only the artist I'm sorry for. It's just that I know exactly where he feels most humiliated.
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Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.
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When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world - profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence.
Ingmar BergmanRead

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