Ingrid Bergman: A Celebration

A Film Lecture Series - Wednesdays at 1 PM, March 5, 12, 19, 26 and April 2, 2014

Hello All,
What a winter it's been. Cold weather made more intolerable by a seemingly endless barrage of snow and ice. Those who ski must be quite happy. Those who lean more towards sitting in a window seat, sipping a cup of warm cocoa are content to remain indoors. Please include me in the latter group.

But spring is (hopefully) just around the corner. March will be here before you know it, and each day is getting a little longer. In the meantime, one way to beat the winter doldrums is to attend my latest film lecture series.

I'm saluting a female Swedish movie star of yesteryear. No, not Garbo. The other one:
Ingrid Bergman. Hollywood producer David O. Selznick saw her in a Swedish film and brought her over to America in the late thirties, where she was signed to a contract.

Her exquisite beauty and singular acting style made her the darling of both the critics and the public for a time. However, events in her private life--she left her first husband and their child for neo-realist Italian director Roberto Rossellini in the early 1950s--made the public turn on her. She was even denounced on the floor of Congress for her indiscretions.

But time heals all wounds, and--after several years living with Rossellini and their children in Rome--Bergman returned from her exile to star in Anastasia on the American movie screen. Apparently all was forgiven, for she was awarded with the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in that film.

I've selected a handful of Ms. Bergman's movies that I hope will serve as a fitting celebration of her work, allowing us to appreciate her anew.

Even those who don't necessarily like old movies must nevertheless be familiar with Bergman's work in Casablanca. This World War II era romance film, in which Bergman and Humphrey Bogart agree that, in memory, they'll "always have Paris," is a Hollywood classic. And if you are a classic film fan, you'll swoon again to the strains of "As Time Goes By," the movie's theme song.

Bergman etched for us a portrait of a woman driven to the brink of insanity in Gaslight, in which she plays a new bride who starts to experience disconcerting things once she begins living with her new husband (Charles Boyer). What's behind these strange events--and can they be stopped before Bergman falls over the precipice into madness?

Spellbound is one of three films that Bergman made with director Alfred Hitchcock (who, as he did with so many of his leading ladies, felt unrequited love for her). This one casts the actress as a clinically cold psychoanalyst who tries to help an amnesiac accused of murder, and finds herself falling in love with him in the process. Gregory Peck is her co-star.

In Anastasia, the film with which she was welcomed back into the good graces of America, Bergman plays a woman who claims to be daughter of deposed Russian Emperor Nicholas II. Supposedly the entire royal family was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1917...but did she somehow escape the overthrow? Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes co-star.

Finally, we'll see Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, playing a missionary in charge of a roadside hostel in remote China, who must endure the invasion of the area by the Japanese. Based on true events, it's the story of a woman forced to summon her inner strength to face great external turmoil.

I am looking forward to getting this series underway--and to seeing all of you again.

The auditorium, second floor of the library. I'll be there.

Doug Swiszcz

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Here's the series at a quick glance:

March  5 - Casablanca 

March 12 - Gaslight

March 19 - Spellbound

March 26 - Anastasia

April  2 -    The Inn of the Sixth Happiness