Ingrid Bergmann

Ingrid Bergman (Stockholm, August 29, 1915-London, August 29, 1982) was a Swedish actress who won 3 Oscars — matched by Meryl Streep in 2012, Frances McDormand in 2021 and only surpassed by Katharine Hepburn with four statuettes—and five Golden Globes, she was also the first winner of the Tony Award for best actress. She is considered one of the myths of the seventh art, according to the list made by the American Film Institute she is the fourth most important star in the history of cinema. She is probably one of the most prolific actresses of the 20th century, partly because she spent her career in five languages (Swedish, German, English, Italian and French) and has acted in film, theater and television in Sweden, Germany, the United States, Canada, England, Italy, France, Spain and Israel. She passed away on her 67th birthday, after fighting a long battle with breast cancer.

Biography

She was the daughter of Justus Samuel Bergman, a small Swedish photography businessman, and his wife Friedel Adler, a native of the German city of Hamburg. She lost her mother when she was three years old and her father, Justus, died eleven years later. Her childhood was spent in her parents' home, then with one of her father's sisters who died six months later, and finally with another paternal uncle, Otto Bergman, and her family.

Beginnings in Sweden

She decided to become an actress to combat her extreme shyness, "I'm more myself when I'm someone else" —she said— and she took her first steps in the cinema as an extra at the age of 16, but her true goal was theater work. Her first opportunity to act as herself was given by Greta Danielsson, an old friend of her father's, who offered her a role as an extra. In 1933 she was chosen from hundreds of applicants to study at The Royal Dramatic Theater School, where she also studied Greta Garbo. Her father, when he died, left everything to her daughter making sure she had money to become an actress.

When Ingrid told her uncle Otto that she wanted to be an actress, he was against it, because at that time being an actress was frowned upon. He thought that since she had good grades in her high school studies, she didn't need to be an actress, but because Ingrid insisted, her uncle promised her that if she auditioned and she wasn't chosen, she wouldn't do it again. to try. The institution The Royal Dramatic Theater School required each actor to represent three pieces, after which, the judges would select two of them, if the applicant was rejected they were given a brown envelope and if they were accepted, a white envelope. Ingrid decided to put on a comedy. While she was performing, the jurors didn't seem to see the humor in her, didn't even pay much attention. Suddenly, after the first reading from her, she was told that she could withdraw from it without giving her a chance for the second. More than half a century later, Ingrid remembered her disappointment:

Scene of his participation in his first film, Munkbrogreven (1934) with 19 years.

When I left the stage I was in mourning, I was at a funeral. Mine. It was the death of my creative self. He really had a broken heart. As I went out to the street, Stockholm, which had always seemed so beautiful to me, it was no longer, and the actors and actresses who waited to pick up their envelope, laughed and mocked me, why didn't you take it?They asked me in laughter. I felt worse every time. Although I hardly saw anything because I had eyes full of tears. When I got home, my cousins were waiting for me, they told me that I had called a friend of them actor who had participated in the tests. He had gotten a white envelope and asked why I hadn't picked up mine. I asked if I knew what color my envelope was. He told me he was white. I flew out. I ran all the time to pick up my white envelope. I was excited. I broke the inside paper when I opened the envelope. Years later I met one of the jurors and asked him why they interrupted my reading so soon. He said to me, “He loved his safety and impertinence. We talked and saw no need to waste time. We knew she was fabulous and had an innate talent. His future as an actress was assured.” That night, when I heard about the white envelope, it was the night that changed my life..

Her first film was Edvin Adolphson's Munkbrogreven. In 1937 she married the dentist Petter Lindström, a union from which her daughter Pia Lindström was born. Petter encourages her to make a film in Germany. During the filming of The pact of the four , Ingrid meets the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda of Nazi Germany Joseph Goebbels, who tries to convince her to make films for the Third Reich, since he was medium German and knew the language, but did not accept. Her sixth film Intermezzo was very successful and caused film producer David O. Selznick to buy the film rights for Ingrid to re-star in the English language.

US debut

Ingrid Bergman together Humphrey Bogart in a movie scene Casablanca (1942). Bergman incarnates Ilsa, former lover of Rick Blaine (Bogart) and wife of the hero of resistance Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid).

In 1939, and after starring in a dozen films in Sweden, he moved to the United States to star in the new version of Intermezzo. In 1942, she starred with Humphrey Bogart in Michael Curtiz's film Casablanca, released in 1943, the year in which she was nominated for the Oscars for the first time, in this case for her brilliant work in the film For Whom the Bell Tolls, although he didn't win it. However, Ingrid Bergman was satisfied with her work and declared publicly in front of actress Jennifer Jones, winner of the award: Your Bernadette is better than my María... . However, the following year she won the Oscar for best actress, this time for her role in Dying Light . In 1945 she received her third consecutive Oscar nomination, this time for the film Las bells de Santa María . The actress would receive her fourth Oscar nomination in the best actress category in 1948, for her role in Joan of Arc .

Scandal with Roberto Rossellini

Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini in 1951.

In 1949 Ingrid Bergman decided to write a letter addressed to the Italian director Roberto Rossellini expressing her desire to work in one of his films. When Rossellini receives the letter he goes to the United States to meet Petter and Ingrid.

In 1949, he moved to Italy with 300 dollars, planning to return in a few months, to shoot the film Stromboli under Rossellini's orders. During the filming, she began a relationship with the Italian director. As a result of this relationship, Bergman became pregnant. Her son Roberto Ingmar Rossellini was born on February 2, 1950, which caused a great scandal in the United States. The vice president and director of Production Codes, Joseph Breen, asked her to deny rumors that she was about to divorce and abandon her first daughter to marry Rossellini. She was criticized by the Lutheran Church of Sweden and priests of the Catholic Church, especially in the United States; she also received letters from people who thought she should be burned at the stake, not as Joan of Arc, but as a witch. The scandal was of such magnitude that it even led to the actress being declared persona non grata on US soil, which caused her to go into exile in Italy, leaving her first husband and first daughter in the United States. As she later stated:

Atrocious letters came to me, every envelope was full of hatred. Some of them put me on fire in hell for all eternity. Others said he was an agent of the devil and that my little one was the son of the devil. And even others that my baby would be born dead or hunched. They talked about all sorts of horrific deformations that would affect my son. They called me a whore and fulana. I couldn't believe I hated so many people. Apart from what they thought about my life, it was my private life, and I had done nothing to them. I was in shock. Letters came from all over, but most of America. America is very big, so there were people to write letters of all kinds. Roberto asked me why I read them if they affected me so much. He said it was like reading reviews of critics who never like your job. What's the point? I told him it was the only way to find letters from friends who encouraged me and supported me..

After separating from Lindström and after the birth of their son, the actress and Rosellini married on May 24, 1950. With the Italian director they also had two other daughters in 1952, the twins Isabella and Isotta. Finally, she separated from Rossellini in 1957. During her stay in Italy she worked on five more films directed by her husband: Europa '51, Siamo Donne, Viaggio in Italia, Giovanna d'Arco al Rogo and La Paura; At the time, these films represented public and critical failures, although they were later revalued, especially thanks to European critics and the creators of the French Nouvelle Vague movement.

Return to international cinema

In Anastasia (1956), by which he won his second Oscar as best actress.

The failures of his joint work with Rossellini led the marriage into an artistic and financial crisis. In 1956 Rossellini allowed her to work under the orders of the French director Jean Renoir in the film Elena et les hommes with which she was once again successful. In that year she starred in England in the film Anastasia for which she would win the second Best Actress Oscar, which her friend and colleague Cary Grant received on her behalf. She redoubled her success with her triumph on the stage in Paris, in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy, during the 1956-1957 season. In 1959 she returned to Hollywood to present the Oscar for Best Picture at the 31st Academy Awards. In the room, the public received her with a standing ovation. On December 23, 1958, she married the Swedish theater producer Lars Schmidt.

From then on, he began to alternate between acting in films in the United States and in Europe, as well as occasional appearances in television dramas and plays. From that period, her work stands out in Another Turn of the Screw (1959), for which she received her first Emmy Award; Hedda Gabler (1962); The Visit (1964); Stimulantia (episode "The Necklace", filmed at the end of 1964 based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, in which he met his former partner from the School of Dramatic Art, Gunnar Björnstrand and Bergman's former mentor, Gustaf Molander, in what was his last work for the cinema); The Human Voice (1966); Cactus Flower (1969); A Matter of Time (1976, film also titled Nina, opposite Liza Minnelli, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring his own daughter, Isabella Rossellini in her film debut screens and was made up by her twin sister, Ingrid Isotta Rossellini;Autumn Sonata, 1978, directed by Ingmar Bergman.In 1974, the actress received her third Oscar, this time in the category of best actress in a cast, for his role in the film Murder on the Orient Express.

In 1975 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and that same year she divorced Lars Schmidt. Despite her failing health, she continued to work full time.

Ingrid Bergman along with his colleague Yossi Graber during a makeup session for the tape A woman named Golda (1982). With this work, Bergman won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe to the best miniserie or telefilm actress.

Her last Oscar nomination was in 1978 for her role in Autumn Sonata, by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. In late 1981, she moved to Israel for the filming of the television miniseries A Woman Called Golda about the life of Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir. The nine weeks of filming, which concluded in London, posed a huge challenge to the failing health of the actress, then in the terminal stage of cancer from which she would die months after filming ended, on her 67th birthday.

Throughout her life, three directors marked her film career: Gustaf Molander, who directed her in seven films and with which she was proclaimed the best promise of Swedish cinema in 1935; Rossellini, who directed her in six films and was her husband; and Alfred Hitchcock, who directed it three times while she was already a consolidated actress.

She received the Italian award Ruban d'Argento for best foreign actress twice, for the films Stromboli, from 1950, and Europa 51 , from 1952.

He also won an Emmy Award (a television Oscar) for his work on Turn of the screw (1959) and A Woman Called Golda (1982). For this miniseries (her last role of hers) she also won the Golden Globe for best actress in a miniseries or television movie.

In theater

Her work on stage was equally recognized both in Sweden, where she made her debut in the 1930s, and in the United States on Broadway in New York where she performed Liliom by Ferenc Molnár (1940); Joan of Lorraine by Maxwell Anderson (1946-47) and Stately Mansions by Eugene O'Neill (1967-68). Her theatrical successes spanned US tours with O'Neill's Anna Christie (1941); across Europe with Claudel and Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake (1953-55); in England, the United States and Canada with The Conversion of Captain Brassbound by George Bernard Shaw (1971-72) and The Constant Wife by Somerset Maugham (1973-75) in addition to his hits in France with Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy (1956-57) and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1962-63) and in London's West End with A Month in the Field by Ivan Turgenev (1965-66) and The Waters of the Moon by Norman Charles Hunter (1977-78).

Ingrid Bergman's Transcendence

According to the list compiled by the American Film Institute, Ingrid Bergman is the fourth most important female star in film history, preceded by Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Audrey Hepburn. On the other hand, since the actress was fluent in Swedish, English, Italian, German and French, she was able to participate in various film works shot in these languages and obtain other awards.

Bergman has also been considered the second actress with the most Oscars in film history with 3 awards: 2 for Best Actress and 1 for Best Supporting Actress, being the fifth actress with the most Oscar nominations with 7 nominations, of which he won 3 times.

Filmography

Cinema

Television

Theater

Ingrid Bergman in The constant wife (1975).

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

BAFTA Awards

Venice International Film Festival

Summary of awards