Ingmar Bergman can “control his thoughts while asleep” – it sounds incredible but is probably true of the man who directed several acclaimed movies, documentaries, television series and plays.

The Swedish creative powerhouse, who was born on July 14, 1918, and died on July 30, 2007, made films that “overflow with images that appear dreamlike”, points out the narrator of a video essay on the Criterion Collection’s YouTube channel. Criterion is the DVD label that restores, issues and reissues classics and the best of contemporary cinema on handsomely produced and top-quality DVDs. Several of Bergman’s films are available on Criterion, including Winter Light, The Magician, Persona, The Seventh Seal, Through a Glass Darkly and the television series Scenes from a Marriage. Each of these works is shot through with Bergman’s singular sensitivity towards human relationships, marriage, family ties, spiritual debates, and psychological battles, and many of them heave with a kind of image-making that has been imitated by filmmakers as varied as Woody Allen and Lars Von Trier.

The Criterion video essay attempts to unpack the roots of Bergman’s visual virtuosity, realised by his long-time collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Bergman didn’t only have the ability to remember his dreams, but was apparently able to recreate them and transport them on the screen – in turn leaving us images that beguile and haunt in equal measure.