Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata.
Ingrid Bergman films on TCM: Hollywood, Cinecittà, the other Bergman
Ingrid Bergman’s best on-screen performance, as Liv Ullmann’s painfully self-centered mother in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata, can be appreciated on Friday, Aug. 6 – Ingrid Bergman Day – on Turner Classic Movies.
TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” film series continues with twelve Bergman films, including more “esoteric” entries such as the aforementioned Autumn Sonata – actually one of director Bergman’s most accessible efforts – and Roberto Rossellini’s psychological drama Europa ’51.
The other scheduled Bergman vehicles, with the possible exceptions of Rossellini’s Stromboli and Guy Green’s A Walk in the Spring Rain, have been shown a number of times on TCM.
Among those are Intermezzo, which introduced the Swedish actress to American audiences in 1939; Casablanca, which won the 1943 Best Picture Oscar and turned Bergman into a superstar; and George Cukor’s 1944 psychological thriller Gaslight, which earned Bergman the first of her two Best Actress Oscars. (The second one was for the 1956 drama Anastasia.)
Not a big fan of Bergman’s work in Gaslight (with Angela Lansbury and Charles Boyer) – the Oscar that year should have gone to non-nominee Tallulah Bankhead for Lifeboat – but she’s even less effective as the tempestuous antiheroine in Saratoga Trunk and as a vulgar sex worker in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In Notorious, Bergman and Cary Grant share a long kiss interrupted (so as to placate the Breen’s Office censors), but this Alfred Hitchcock thriller belongs to Nazi Claude Rains and Madame Konstantin as his borderline-incestuous mommy.
Curiously, Liv Ullmann failed to be shortlisted for the 1978 Best Actress Oscar. Ingrid Bergman’s competitors were Jill Clayburgh for An Unmarried Woman, Geraldine Page for Woody Allen’s Ingman Bergman-inspired Interiors, Ellen Burstyn for Same Time Next Year, and the eventual winner, Jane Fonda for Coming Home. There should have been a tie that year: Bergman and Clayburgh.
Ingrid Bergman films: TCM schedule (PDT)
3:00 AM Saratoga Trunk (1945)
Director: Sam Wood.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Flora Robson, Jerry Austin, John Warburton, Florence Bates, Curt Bois, John Abbott, Ethel Griffies.
135m5:15 AM Stromboli (1950)
Director: Roberto Rossellini.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Mario Vitale, Renzo Cesana.
107m7:00 AM The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)
Director: Anthony Asquith.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Rex Harrison, Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, Alain Delon, Omar Sharif, George C. Scott, Edmund Purdom, Joyce Grenfell, Art Carney, Moira Lister, Isa Miranda.
123m9:15 AM A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970)
Director: Robert B. Sinclair.
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Ingmar Bergman, Fritz Weaver.
98m11:00 AM Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1941)
Director: Victor Fleming.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Donald Crisp, Ian Hunter, Barton MacLane, C. Aubrey Smith, Peter Godfrey, Sara Allgood.
113m1:00 PM Spellbound (1945)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, John Emery.
111m3:00 PM Europa ‘51 (1952)
Director: Roberto Rossellini.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Alexander Knox, Giulietta Masina.
110m5:00 PM Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939)
Director: Gregory Ratoff.
Cast: Leslie Howard, Ingrid Bergman, Edna Best.
70 mins6:30 PM Casablanca (1942)
Director: Michael Curtiz.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, S.Z. Sakall, Helmut Dantine.
103m8:30 PM Notorious (1946)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin, Reinhold Schünzel, Ivan Triesault.
101m10:30 PM Autumn Sonata (1978)
Director: Ingmar Bergman.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Halvar Bjork.
93m12:30 AM Gaslight (1944)
Director: George Cukor.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty, Angela Lansbury, Barbara Everest, Edmund Breon, Terry Moore.
114m
“Ingrid Bergman Films on TCM” notes
Turner Classic Movies website.
Ingrid Bergman Autumn Sonata image: ITC Entertainment.