I have left the branch of butchery and whoring

Ingmar Bergman

He told Swedish newspaper Expressen: "I have left the branch of butchery and whoring. It feels as if a very distant cousin has done all that."

Bergman added that he was not even moved by his own films anymore, and that producing another would be too physically demanding.

He is now preparing to direct a play by Henrik Ibsen for Norwegian radio, and is also writing a play himself, for broadcast on radio or television.

Bergman, whose films include 1957's The Seventh Seal, said he now spends as much time as possible at home on the Baltic island of Faaroe, 100 miles south west of Stockholm.

Bergman last week: No plans for a return to film

He watches a film everyday at 3pm when he is at home, chosing from his collection of 4,500 films, of which his favourites are old, silent Swedish movies.

The director has seven houses on the island, and says of it: "There are two places where I feel at home, and these are Faaroe and Rome."

He owns enough property to house his nine children and their families, and now says he limits his social life to seeing them and speaking on the telephone to his closest friend, actor Erland Josephson.

Earlier this year he told Josephson in a television interview that his wife Ingrid's death in 1985 had "crippled" him, and that he was "immensely indifferent to whether I keep on living".