The film-maker as conjurer

Bergman calls his first projector his first conjuring set: the toy of a magician.

Cinema works by deceiving the human eye. A film is a series of still pictures, with darkness between them; the eye cannot tell, and sees them as moving.

With this apparatus, he can make an audience laugh, scream with fright, believe in fairy tales, feel shocked or moved, or simply yawn with boredom.

So he is a cheat, he says; unless the audience happily agrees to be fooled. In that case he is a conjurer.

And his tools are more wonderful than any entertainer in history could have dreamed of.