The great Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman made a rare appearance on American television when he visited The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, with actress Bibi Andersson, for a lengthy, in-depth interview.

Ostensibly about his then current film The Touch (with Andersson, Max Von Sydow and Elliot Gould), Cavett leads the conversation in unexpected places (fascism, drugs, his estrangement from his parents, working with women, his temper on set, artistic freedom). Bergman often turns the conversation around and poses the questions back to Cavett before he eventually answers. The whole thing is fascinating. Cavett is his usual knowledgeable self. Bergman tells a great story about getting one of his favorite shots ever in Wild Strawberries.

It’s difficult to imagine a conversation like this taking place on American TV forty-years later, isn’t it? It’s also weird from the vantage point of 2011 to consider that a mainstream audience might have actually known who the guy was back then! How times have changed and not necessarily for the better…