JOIN US105 years with and 38 years without Ingrid Bergman
The year is 1961. Anthony Perkins was all set to shoot a romantic scene with Ingrid Bergman for their movie 'Goodbye Again'. He plays the role of a young man smitten by an older woman, played by Ingrid Bergman. Perkins must not have got the intimacy right, for Bergman told him to hold her with more affection. Perkins obeyed and director Anatole Litvak canned the shot in two takes. Perkins always said that Ingrid Bergman was his teacher.
Bergman, the classic Swedish beauty, was a born actress and a voracious reader, with taste in William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Percy Shelly and Alexander Pushkin.
In the 40s, Ingrid Bergman graced Hollywood with classics such as 'Notorious', 'Spellbound', 'Casablanca' and 'Under the Capricorn'. For Victor Fleming’s 'Joan of Arc', she missed an Oscar by merely two points. In the climax, as she is set on fire, she cried "O Jesus” with tears that were real. She had moments that defined entire films: from acting with her eyebrows in ‘Casablanca’ to a heart-breaking scene in ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’, where she breaks down after Gary Cooper’s character is shot dead.
She left her work in Hollywood after she fell in love with Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini and moved to Europe. Bergman was in full bloom during her European phase. Not willing to be tied down by the metrics of method acting, her calculated yet carefree work in ‘Journey to Italy’ (1954) is a lesson in acting. Bergman would deliver a lifetime’s performance in fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman’s 'Autumn Sonata' (1978).
She returned with a bang to Hollywood in 1956 with 'Anastasia' and won her first Oscar. Yul Bryner, the hero of Anastasia, refused to work till Bergman was cast in the title role. Her step dance scene in the movie was flawless. Her favourite co-star was the debonair Cary Grant, while she made a superb pair with Gregory Peck in 'Spellbound'. Alfred Hitchcock termed her “a director’s delight.” Omar Sharif was overwhelmed when Bergman said she found it difficult to react to his glittering eyes in ‘The Yellow Rolls Royce’.
Bergman maintained a distance from the film fraternity, but she was seen at the Oscars and the film festivals at Cannes, Venice and Berlin. If Katherine Hepburn was unpredictable, Sophia Loren evergreen, Ava Gardner inimitable and Elizabeth Taylor an epitome of beauty, then Bergman was classy.
Bergman won a supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in 'Murder on The Orient Express’ (1974). Born on August 29 in 1915, she died on another August 29, in 1982.