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Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words



Whether headlining films in Sweden, Italy, or Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman always pierced the screen with a singular soulfulness. With this new documentary, made on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Bergman's birth, director Stig Björkman allows us unprecedented access to her world, culling from the most personal of archival materials—letters, diary entries, photographs, and Super 8 and 16 mm footage Bergman herself shot—and following her from youth to tumultuous married life and motherhood. Intimate and artful, this lovingly assembled portrait, narrated by actor Alicia Vikander, provides luminous insight into the life and career of an undiminished legend.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• High-definition digital transfer, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with director Stig Björkman
• Super 8 home movies shot by Bergman in the 1930s
• Two deleted scenes, showing Bergman's daughters reading an essay she wrote at age seventeen and an interview with film historian and Bergman scholar Rosario Tronnolone
• Extended versions of scenes featuring interviews with actors Sigourney Weaver and Liv Ullmann and Bergman's daughter Isabella Rossellini and with the three Rossellini siblings
• Clip from the 1932 film Landskamp, featuring Bergman in her first screen role
• Outtakes from Bergman's 1936 film On the Sunny Side
• Music video for Eva Dahlgren's song "The Movie About Us," which is included on the film's soundtrack
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Jeanine Basinger

Why? Seriously is there anything about this film that warranted its own release especially when the extras suggest there's two films they could have released in full as this release?

If there ever was a release that felt like an extra for an already existing release...

Seriously, a stand alone release?

Well, I'll be a sonuvabitch. I never would have expected this as a standalone release. But I will say, I am kind of impressed it has that many extras (or any at all, really). This easily could have been a no-frills cheapo disc. I haven't seen the film, but it at least warrants a rent for me.

If they turn around and release another Bergman film later this year with minuscule extras… well, then I'd be miffed they didn't save this for that. But I'm guessing that's not in the cards (which means some obscenely huge boxset is probably in the queue for holiday season via Murphy's law).

It makes sense to me to celebrate Ingrid Bergman's career with a standalone release, especially if it is going to focus more on the life of the actress than any individual role that could be tied into a film (the extras look as if they are focusing on Bergman's early Swedish films, the most famous of which had a DVD release through Kino. Though of course I'd have loved an early Ingrid Bergman Criterion set to tie in with this!), and it is almost two hours long with extras.

In some ways this is making me hopeful for more Criterion releases about cinema. I know its far too early but I have my fingers crossed for the Bertrand Tavernier documentary currently at Cannes maybe turning up.

By the way, this is not Stig Björkman's first entry into the Criterion Collection - his hour long documentary on Lars von Trier, Tranceformer, is on the Element of Crime disc.

He also has a doc on the Summer with Monika disc.

I loved reading Ingrid Bergman's autobiography "Ingrid Bergman: My Story". Basically any picture with Ingrid Bergman in it, I will watch. The story of her life and career is quite fascinating. It's sort of a microcosm of women's place in the world in general, over the decades she lived. I remember that during her lowest periods, when she was shamed by the press and scorned by "good society", it was Ernest Hemingway who wrote her the most supportive and reassuring letters. I never forgot about that. It caused Hemingway to rise in esteem with me, and also showed Bergman to be a vulnerable human being who was struggling in earnest to be a good person. I loved her dignity in the face of often ridiculous treatment. I am really looking forward to this release. I could not think of a more worthy actress to receive such treatment from Criterion.

I caught some of this on an SAS flight, and it's as you might imagine, a straightforward bio-pic with some above average stock footage. Certainly didn't see any reason for a prestige release, but I'm not a Criterion purist, so doesn't bother me either.

I'm thrilled.

I saw the film last year and loved it. Once of the very best releases of 2015. Not a frame is wasted and it left my wanting more.

My only qualms with the film are the use of Michael Nyman's Wonderland score and a cheesy song over the end credits. Otherwise utter perfection.

domino harvey wrote:Seriously, a stand alone release?

I don't post here much, but when I saw that this is getting a standard release I felt disappointed in Criterions decision. Yes it has nice extras but they all belong on some Ingrid feature film that's not a documentary.

Does anybody remember The Matrix Revisited when it was released as a stand alone DVD and how annoying that was?

I enjoyed this film a great deal. The unique and rare home-movie footage was a wonderful glimpse into a world someone like me will likely never know. In real, meaningful ways, this film was more a psychological portrait than a typical career summary.

The viewer is taken on an emotional rollercoaster along with ms Bergman. When she is up and on top of the world, you feel the high, though there is always some tiny trace of hollowness in it all, which you can feel from her words and voice. When she is down, you fall with her.

There are life-affirming moments of love and joy, often with her family.

I also cannot help but wonder whether Bergman ever felt that her deliberate act of leaving behind her roots in Sweden (to the extent that any actually existed... cousins, relatives) ever caused any damage to her happiness and well-being? There is a school of thought that says having roots to a community and/or place is good for human beings. With all of her cosmopolitan wanderings, and with so few roots attached to anything, I can't help but wonder whether this issue of rootlessness was a net positive or negative in her life.

I'm still not convinced it warranted a standalone release (but ultimately, who cares? It's not as if any number of other feature films in the collection are any less deserving of the so-called 'privilege'), but this was really enjoyable. The archival material is indeed remarkable, extending right back to home movies of Ingrid as an infant, and it's very well corralled and not just non-sensationalistic, but positively anti-sensationalistic. The kind of intimate documentation available to Bjorkman is what distinguishes this from your standard celebrity doc. Haven't got to any of the extras yet, but now I'm looking forward to them.

I don't remember, did we whine a lot about Bergman island and Louie bluie or a fuller life getting stand alone releases? Seems to be in the same vein as the courtesy afforded male cinema figures.

This is a really substantial film, a great portrait of Bergman and a really remarkable illustration of her compositional and photographic talent and particularly her sense of the moment. It makes me wish she'd created (or been allowed) opportunities to direct or produce in her own right.

The film has some beautiful editing, both in pacing and in so seamlessly stitching together all the disparate little pieces of footage.

I love the bit at the end about how Isabella feels like her mother revisited her "treasures" because she couldn't visit her parents, so this was how she visited them, and how this film is (in a way) about the children visiting their mother since they can no longer can, and in themselves experienced an absence of parental presence just as acutely as Bergman did. I really like the central melancholy that all this footage shot during the few moments they were together is a fabrication, not a representation of their childhood, but what their mother wanted to believe in; I like how confident the film is In methodically and patiently drawing that out. But I think that is true of so many workaholic parents, it in some ways makes her seem all the more authentic a figure. And I love the power this film has in that subtitle "IN HER OWN WORDS" women so rarely have their own voice in this industry, even today, and almost never do women have their own voice when historians talk about these eras of film history, since it's almost always about the white men in power that are being talked about (even by the women) and while there are many biographies, the privilege of the theatrical film medium being used for an exclusively female subject is still rare for representations of Hollywood.

Are you kidding, Bergman Island was universally derided. Gimme a breaksville on making reactions to this an issue of sexism

A Fuller Life hasn't been released by Criterion.

Probably because Samuel Fuller is a woman

domino harvey wrote:Are you kidding, Bergman Island was universally derided. Gimme a breaksville on making reactions to this an issue of sexism

I agree with you, but that film is directed by a woman so maybe it evens out?

You can't even spell the name of this movie without "Edward G Robinson," a male actor

This isn't indexed which makes it a bit annoying to find. Anyway, a question unrelated to the sheer mediocrity of this fluff. Several of the letters during the Rossellini section use the word paparazzi. I was under the impression the term came from Fellini which wouldn't occur for another five years so how does it pop up here.?

knives wrote:This isn't indexed which makes it a bit annoying to find.

Fixed.

Thanks Who could have guessed that the words Bergman, Her, and Words occur so often on the board?

knives wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:34 am This isn't indexed which makes it a bit annoying to find. Anyway, a question unrelated to the sheer mediocrity of this fluff. Several of the letters during the Rossellini section use the word paparazzi. I was under the impression the term came from Fellini which wouldn't occur for another five years so how does it pop up here.?

I wondered the same thing. She uses the word "paparazzi" in a letter that was supposedly written during the making of Stromboli, which would've been in something like 1949 or 1950. Yet Webster's says that the word is "from Paparazzo, surname of such a photographer in the film La dolce vita (1959) by Federico Fellini," and this same etymology is repeated in other sources. Perhaps we both misunderstood and the letter was written later as she reflected back on the making of Stromboli. Although if that's the case, it's used in a rather misleading way.