Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words

If you have any recollection of screen legend Ingrid Bergman, Stig Björkman's 2015 documentary is a must-see simply because it follows her emotionally complex life purely through archival footage and stills (including her own home movies) and her four children none of whom are resentful of her partial abandonment of them. Gratefully there are no film scholars or celebrities (other than true colleagues Sigourney Weaver and Liv Ullmann) remarking on her life and career because the point of the film was to understand her feelings directly through her voice even though it's fellow Swedish actress Alicia Vikander who is reciting Bergman's diary entries. Released on her centenary, the most memorable section was her first Hollywood screen test where her breathtaking natural beauty took hold. The rest of the film made complete sense from there.

Icon is becoming an almost useless word. Therefore, it's good Stig Björkman puts his focus on Ingrid Bergman as a human, and let's face it, how many of her pictures are interesting today, except Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman? Casablanca is a Bogart movie.

Many amateur clips. Her children talks about her mostly being somewhere else. The only one who shows some bitterness between the lines is the son.

But anyway this Stig Björkman focus doesn't really have the potential to make us something more than shallow watchers. A rather entertaining story, but the entertainment isn't enough. You miss the analysis.

I cannot disagree more with the post above. Notorious is a well regarded Hitchcock classic. It was Bergman's film and she gave the vest performance from any Hitch films. Journey to Italy is considered the first modern film, a major classic of cinema and hailed by such influential directors as Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Scorsese and of course Bazan. Bogie will not be a romantic idol without the radiant and luminous Bergman. Can you picture another major actress at that time in the role of Ilsa? All three films are on the list of Sight and Sound 2012 best films ever poll.

And there are still a large audience for films such as Gas light, spellbound, Anastasia and Autumn sonata.

Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, through her own title, wishes to give the main idea of ​​the documentary, besides a posthumous tribute made by the person who is alive, her desire is that the central figure (Bergman) Own and pictures too. Such images were, therefore, a confessable passion of the actress, who manifested herself as a child when her father recorded her daughter on a daily basis.

After her father's death, Ingrid continued the records on her own, altering only the order of her captures, it was she, who now assumed the records of various moments and of the various people she met in her life.

Directed by the Swedish Stig Björkman, the documentary partially fulfills its promise, and the reason is soon unattainable, since without the presence of Bergman to talk about his life and also by the focus that the actress directed his letters and his diary, almost was little About his career, about his work and what causes a certain astonishment, since this was notoriously his greatest pleasure and where he felt happier. His records were largely concerned with the death of his mother and his brothers at an early age, and of the only figure he had left, but also of his father. Then his records are focused on the love life followed by the life of the four children, these being, figures that add a great part and time in the writing of the actress.

Thus Bergman's words presented through a rich collection of images and home movies, is the strongest and most interesting element of the documentary, which extracts through interviews, archives and diaries of the Swedish star, the voice (own) Of the figure-character.

The lack of any significant research on performance styles is appreciably felt, particularly due to the very different methods of its principal directors: George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Rossellini, Jean Renoir, Stanley Donen, Ingmar Bergman. There is some slight personality analysis - she was led, she was shy, "love came through the lens of the camera," she was brave - and the four children painted an attractive portrait of her largely absent mother. However, the psychological depth, Bjorkman, maker of documentaries like "Ingmar Bergman" and "Lars von Trier", barely goes beyond the level of a portrait of the Channel Biography. As such, Bergman is actually very difficult to read, and we are drawn to it even more because of it.

With so much reference material at his disposal, Björkman can not overcome this mystery entirely, but what he does quite elegantly is to explore the mixed feelings of these four surviving children, all of which make it clear how fun it was and also give Light for the mother's felt absence at the desire of the actress in love with the craft.

Perhaps there is nothing radically new to those with some knowledge of Ingrid Bergman's story of many other biographical TV portraits, but this is still a worthy door-to-call for all the curious about one of the greatest icons of cinema.

My thoughts about the film are the same as Isabella's about the correspondance; I thought there would be a story in here about a woman becoming a star in Hollywood, about struggle and cinema, but its just all children. Which would be fine, if not for Bergman's tendancy to shy away from thinking/writing about the negatives in that relationship, and once even from acting it out. Vague, but hypnotic.