Triple Oscar Winning actress Ingrid Bergman was an extraordinary iconic movie star who defied both the Hollywood studio system and a rather puritanical press and society to lead the life that she wanted, regardless of the consequences. This new highly intimate look at Sweden’s most famous actress (after Garbo), based on Bergman’s own diaries, home movies and pictures has been made with the co-operation on her children and it provides a window into what made this exceptionally charming Diva, the woman that really she was.The movie focuses on Bergman herself rather than her work, and starts as she in 1939 as she is first traveling to Hollywood from Sweden clutching a new 5 Year Contract with David O. Selznick who wants to re-make her big Swedish hit ‘Intermezzo’. To do so she has left behind her husband and new baby daughter Pia in what starts to be a pattern of abandonment that she will repeat so often in the future. The movie is an enormous hit, and she is now in great demand and seems never to stop working. In 1943 she picks up her first Academy Award Nomination (“For Whom The Bell Tolls”) and the following year actually wins the Oscar for her performance in “Gaslight”. Her husband Petter and daughter Pia are now in the US, but settled in Rochester NY, so Bergman rarely sees them.
The three movies she makes with Hitchcock at the end of that decade are barely mentioned, but what is touched on is her obsession with “Joan of Arc” which Bergman also got to play on stage. The movie was directed by Victor Fleming and by Bergman’s own account she fell hopeless in love with him. The infatuation however finished after shooting was over which was a pattern Bergman adopted with over men in her life too.
Despite being one of Hollywood’s top box office stars, Bergman was very restless and so when she saw an Italian movie made by Roberto Rossellini, she immediately wrote to him offering to be in his next movie. He accepted and so she upped and left America and they made “Stromboli” on the remote volcanic island with the same name, and again Bergman fell for her director. The feelings were reciprocated and the couple made absolutely no efforts to hide their love affair from the world. As both of them were still married to other people, the volcano wasn’t the only thing that erupted,. So too did a world-wide scandal that almost ruined her career.
After divorcing their spouses Rossellini and Bergman married and had four children and made four more movies together. The latter were not a success and when Bergman started getting unsettled again and wanting to make films with other directors, it marked the start of the disintegration of her second marriage.
During her time in Italy, Bergman’s estranged daughter Pia who had grown up with her father in NY, paid a visit. It was the first time mother and daughter had seen each other in over 10 years. The Rossellini children would also soon have their own taste of long distance mothering, as Bergman left them all in Italy in a home of their own with just staff to care for them when she went off to Sweden to live with her next husband Lars Schmidt. Isabella Rossellini was just 6 years old at the time. Bergman wrote at the time “I loved the children, but I loved acting more. Without it, life was boring and unfulfilled”. The remarkable thing was that even now Pia, and her siblings, genuinely hold no grudge against their mother abandoning them like this.
In 1956 Bergman was finally persuaded to do another movie in Hollywood but she was as nervous as hell how she, and the film, would be received. In fact the Studios themselves were not at all keen on her comeback but the Russian born director Anatole Litvak insisted that he wouldn’t make the movie without her. It was called “Anastasia” and Bergman need not have worried as not only had the public ‘forgiven’ her but she actually won the Academy Award for Leading Actress. Her diary entry at the time reads “I was a saint, then a whore, then a saint again, all in the same lifetime”.
In a career that spanned some 50 years and that had her living and working around the world : 10 in Hollywood, 8 in Italy, 20 in Paris and then ending up in London, Bergman lived the life that she wanted to life. Her mantra was simply “I never regret anything” and even though this upset her daughter Ingrid Bergman, she still conceded that it was right that her mother said and believed that.
In fact the overall theme that permeates throughout this compelling documentary by filmmaker Stig Björkman is that everyone who knew the fiercely independent Bergman never regretted about being part of her life. As unconventional and as self-centered that she was, they all line up to portray one of the greatest actresses of the last century simply as disarmingly charming and a sheer joy to be with. The last words are from daughter Isabella “she was too much fun to be with”.
Labels: 2015, biography, documentary, movies
