Most directors have opted for one or a few artistic media: theatre, film, radio, television, opera. B opted for them all. But two of them took precedence: theatre and film. His comparison of the former to his wife, the latter to his mistress, has become legendary. There was always a close connection between the two, between his work for the stage and his work for the screen:

Seven years later, he declared: “Between my job at the theater and my job in the film studio it has always been a very short step indeed. Sometimes it has paid off, and sometimes it has been a drawback. But it has always been a short step between” (B, 1973: 99).

As a stage director B was living with a particular play in heart and mind for long periods. Many of these plays left traces in the films. The Seventh Seal grew out of a play, Wood Painting. Smiles of a Summer Night “is constructed like a piece by Marivaux – in the classical 18th century manner” (B, 1973: 66f.). Through a Glass Darkly is “a surreptitious stage-play” (ib. 163). Winter Light took shape in his mind as “a medieval play” (B, 1994b: 258). B himself made a stage version of his TV series Scenes from a Marriage and many of his films have later been adapted into stage plays.

As a film maker, Marianne Höök claimed, B “is always primarily the man of the theater who distrusts technical shortcuts, relying solely on the human being and the spoken word” (Cowie, 1992: 300). There is much to be said for the view that “no other film director after the breakthrough of the sound film has been so influenced by the theatre” (Zern, 1993: 59). B's theatrical orientation is further corroborated by his frequent use of stage or stage-like performances in his films (Koskinen, 1993: 155-262).