Oscar Profile #37: Ingrid Bergman

Born August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden to a Swedish father and German mother, Ingrid Bergman was named after Sweden’s Princess Ingrid. Her mother died when she was three, her father when she was thirteen. She then went to live with her father’s sister who died six months later and then an aunt and uncle who had five children of their own. At 17 she was allowed one chance to become an actress by auditioning for a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, which she was sure she had lost. Instead she not only won the scholarship but was given an unprecedented starring role in a play in her first year at the school and went on to perform in summer stock during her vacation. This led quickly to film roles and by her early twenties she had become a star in Swedish films.

She married neurosurgeon Peter Lindstrom in 1937 and gave birth to daughter Pia in 1938. She was brought to America by David O. Selznick in 1939 to star in his Hollywood remake of her 1935 film, Intermezzo, leaving her husband and daughter behind as she intended to make just the one film and return to Sweden. The film was a smash hit and so was Ingrid, whose apple pie complexion required no makeup to project her on-screen beauty. She returned to Sweden, but the with outbreak of World War II and her by now assured popularity in Hollywood, she came quickly back with her husband and daughter in tow.

She made three films in 1941 and then in 1942 starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in what was to become one of the most beloved films of all time, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca. Her 1943 film, Sam Wood’s For Whom the Bell Tolls opposite Gary Cooper, would become her personal favorite of all the films she made. Taken from Ernest Hemingway’s novel, the film has not aged as well as some of her other hits but was key to her emergence as the biggest female star of the era. It brought her the first of her seven Oscar nominations.

Her next film, George Cukor’s 1944 remake of the 1940 British gothic thriller of the same title, Gaslight, brought her the little golden man himself. Leo McCarey’s 1945 film, The Bells of St. Mary’s opposite Bing Crosby brought her a third consecutive Oscar nomination. That film, along with Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound opposite Gregory Peck the same year won her the New York Film Critics Award. She was now the biggest female star in Hollywood and one who could do no wrong. Her brilliant performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 film, Notorious opposite Cary Grant, went without Oscar notice but her portrayal of the French saint in Victor Fleming’s 1948 production of Joan of Arc brought her a fourth nomination.

The public, which had put her on a pedestal, equating her with the nuns and saints she played, was about to turn on her with a viciousness that had never been seen before and thankfully, has not been seen since.

In Italy in 1949 to film Stromboli for Roberto Rossellini she fell in love with the director, became pregnant and by him and decided to stay in Italy and marry him, resulting in a scandalous divorce from her first husband and causing moral outrage from everyone from the Hollywood gossips to the floor of U.S. Senate where Edwin C. Johnson, Senator from Colorado, made the remark “from the ashes of Ingrid Bergman may there rise a better Hollywood.”

Time, though, heals all wounds as they say, and after making five films with Rossellini and giving him three children, that chapter in her life came to an end. Appearing on the Paris stage in Tea and Sympathy, she was approached by Twentieth Century Fox and asked to star in Anastasia to be filmed in Paris and other European locales. She accepted.

Hedging their bets, Fox cast Yul Brynner, straight from The Ten Commandments and The King and I as her leading man and the great Helen Hayes, then the most respected woman in the world next to Eleanor Roosevelt, as her grandmother. The reasoning was if Hayes could accept her back, then so could the rest of America and they did, of course. The result was a bevy of awards including her second Oscar on her fifth nomination.

Divorced from Rossellini, she married Swedish businessman Lars Schmidt in 1958. Numerous stage, TV and film successes followed, most notably Indiscreet opposite old friend Cary Grant; The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Cactus Flower. In 1972 Senator Charles Percy entered a statement in the Congressional Record apologizing for Edwin Johnson’s remarks of 22 years earlier, prompting one of Bergman’s most famous quotes, “I’ve gone from saint to whore and back to saint again, all in one lifetime.”

A small but memorable role in Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express brought her a third Oscar on her sixth nomination. Alone after her divorce from Schmidt in 1975, her portrayal of a career obsessed concert pianist in Ingmar Bergman’s 1978 film, Autumn Sonata brought numerous awards but failed to win her another Oscar, although she was nominated for the seventh time.

Although officially retired now, she was lured back before the cameras one last time for the TV mini-series, A Woman Called Golda, in which she played Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, for which she again won unanimous acclaim.

Ingrid Bergman died of cancer in London on her 67th birthday in 1982. Two weeks later she won an Emmy for A Woman Called Golda. It was accepted by her daughter Pia.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

CASABLANCA (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz

One of the great romantic films of all time, Casablanca is also a political thriller, an amalgam of clichés so seamlessly woven together that they don’t seem like clichés at all, but a profound meditation on the times in which they take place. From Humphrey Bogart’s cynical club owner to Dooley Wilson’s playing of “As Time Goes By” to the battle of the anthems sung at counterpoint by the French and the Germans to the exciting climax, there is much to like here, but at the heart is the romance between Bogie and Bergman. This was Bergman’s first great romantic role in a Hollywood film and she is absolutely luminous from beginning to end.

THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S (1945), directed by Leo McCarey

This is the film that immortalized Bergman as the ideal woman – a nun who is also surrogate mother to her students as well as her fellow nuns, a skilled negotiator with the rich and powerful who also brings out the best in her parish priest and supposed superior, played by Bing Crosby at his most charming. Sister Benedict, the character she creates here, is so warmly drawn that audiences assumed the real Bergman must be as perfect as the character she plays. That doesn’t excuse, but does help explain why audiences who made this one of the most successful films of its era felt so personally offended when the actress left her husband and daughter for a “foreign” director in a “foreign” land.

ANASTASIA (1956), directed by Anatole Litvak

This was the perfect vehicle for Bergman’s return to the public’s grace. In it she plays an amnesiac who may or may not be the youngest of Czar Nicholas’ children, thought to have escaped the murder of her family in the Communist coup of 1917-18. She goes through all the tortures of hell before being granted an audience with the Dowager Empress Maria, her presumed grandmother. Producers reasoned that if the grandmother played by Helen Hayes, the first lady of the American Theater, can accept her, so, too, should the movie-going public. And of course they did. The climactic scene between the two actresses is the highlight of the film.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974), directed by Sidney Lumet

Bergman’s choice of the right role for herself was never more evident than when she turned down Sidney Lumet’s request for her to play the part of the Russian Princess Dragomiroff in this stylish production of Agatha Christie’s famed novel. She chose instead to play the less showy role of Greta, the tongue-tied missionary. While all the other stars of the film, and there are many, including Wendy Hiller who played her cast off role of Dragomiroff, are given grand entrances, Bergman’s mousey character enters quietly and quickly with her head down. It immediately draws audience sympathy and you can’t wait to see her again. When you do, she doesn’t give you much, just enough to remind you that you are in the presence of one of the great screen actresses of all time.

AUTUMN SONATA (1978), directed by Ingmar Bergman

Autumn Sonata was the complete opposite of Murder on the Orient Express. Whereas the prior film showcased Bergman at her most minimal, her big screen swan song showcased her at full throttle. Working with her fellow Swede with the same surname for the first time, she plays an aging concert pianist who visits the daughter (Liv Ullmann) she has neglected for many years with old wounds coming to the surface in their confrontation. Was it simply great acting or was there more than just a bit of the real Bergman in her character? Was it art imitating life or life imitating art? Perhaps it was a bit of both.