Ingrid Bergman Talking Pictures

One of the greatest stars from the golden age of movies,

Ingrid Bergman, came from Sweden to America in the 1930s.

Her talent

and natural beauty won the hearts of cinema-goers the world over.

For a period in the 1940s, she was Hollywood's biggest box office draw.

She starred in the enduring classic Casablanca

and was awarded a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Gaslight.

Then, in the 1950s, came scandal.

An affair and a child with the Italian director

Roberto Rossellini while she was still married to her first husband.

Bergman was condemned by America's outraged moral guardians,

in politics and the press.

She left the US for several years,

but when she finally returned to Hollywood, it was in triumph.

Her film Anastasia earned her a second Oscar.

Our first interview is from an appearance on Parkinson in 1973.

And the discussion begins with an open

confession from the infatuated host.

I must now confess a hitherto unpublished fact about myself

and it concerns my next guest.

It is that I've been in love with her for years.

She never knew because when we first met more than 20 years ago,

I was in the one and nines at the local fleapit

and she was up there on the screen, looking like an angel.

And this was the precise moment that the both of us met.

Play it, Sam.

Play As Time Goes By.

I can't remember it, Miss Ilsa.

I'm a little rusty on it.

I'll hum it for you.

# Da-da da-da da-dum

# Da-da da-di da-dum... #

HE PLAYS

Sing it, Sam.

# You must remember this

# A kiss is just a kiss

# A sigh is just a sigh

# The fundamental things apply

# As time goes by

# And when two lovers woo

# They still say I love you

# On that you can rely

# No matter what the future brings

# As time goes by. #

Sam, I thought I told you never to play...

I could watch that scene for ever.

Ladies and gentlemen, my special guest tonight, Ingrid Bergman.

APPLAUSE

I've waited a long time and I must say it's worth it.

Well, it's very nice of you indeed.

I really do approve of my taste. Did you know when...?

LAUGHTER

Did you know when you were making that film, Casablanca,

that it would one day become the cult movie that it is now?

No, I certainly did not at all.

It was a great confusion during the shooting of the picture

and I'm quite surprised, but I must say I saw the picture here at the

Film Institute about two years ago for the first time on the screen,

not on television, and I really thought it was a very good movie.

-It is a good movie.

-Yes. Surprise!

There aren't many films, are there,

that you can look back at and think, "That's a good, good movie."

It was good also because all the parts

were played by such good actors.

The smallest part was really a top class actor.

-Yes.

-So that helped a lot.

-Yes.

Is it true it was made in, as you say, confusion?

-Nobody had a real idea.

-No, we didn't.

The script, it was written as we went along and to tell you the truth,

no-one knew how to end it, so we went along until the bitter end

and it was very bitter because they said, I should shoot it both ways.

Either I should go with the husband in the plane,

played by Paul Henreid, or stay on the ground with Humphrey Bogart.

LAUGHTER And it was very difficult to act out these love scenes because

I really didn't know which one of the two men I was in love with.

LAUGHTER But it doesn't show!

No, it doesn't. You went off with the right fella in the end.

-What about Bogart? He's grown into a cult figure too, hasn't he?

-Yes.

-Oh, very much so.

-What is the appeal?

-Were you able to assess it when you were working with him?

-No.

Of course, he was an excellent actor and he always played himself.

He didn't make any character...make-up or change

anything. As a matter of fact, I think

he wore the same raincoat and the same hat in every movie.

LAUGHTER

He must have been terrible to be close to!

LAUGHTER Well...

He had that marvellous voice that you can hear right now this minute.

It was such an interesting and rough voice

and of course he was also considered a tough man,

but I think that inside he was quite a loveable person.

You say you think so, didn't you get to know him at all?

No, I really didn't.

I think he was upset as everybody else about not having a script

and not knowing exactly where we were going

and he used to stay very much by himself.

And... Well, in another interview...

Of course, I have talked a lot about Casablanca!

Ignore all the other interviews.

This is the first time you've talked to me.

And they used to ask me if I knew him and I said, "No, I don't know him.

"I kissed him, but I don't know him!"

It must be difficult, particularly playing a romantic part

opposite somebody that you literally don't know.

You just see on the set.

No, it isn't difficult, when you look like Humphrey Bogart.

You can act like he does.

I think he's absolutely wonderful.

I'm so pleased when I see that he looks at me

with such love in his eyes. It's very flattering.

Of course, one of the great characters in that film,

behind the scenes, was Michael Curtiz, the director.

There are more stories about Curtiz in Hollywood than probably

-Cecil B DeMille, I suppose.

-Yes.

He was a very colourful person and temperamental.

He told me a very funny story.

When he came from Hungary, that was years before Casablanca, because he

had done several pictures before, he arrived in America by boat

and he saw the harbour full of flags and bands playing

and ribbons were flying and he was so moved where he stood,

seeing this, he said, "I didn't know that they knew me so well in America

"and I would get a reception like this!"

And it was much later they told him it was the 4th July.

LAUGHTER

-It was not for him.

-Poor devil. Can you remember your first audition?

Yes, I started dramatic school

and we have the Royal Theatre in Stockholm

and that is a free school, you see,

so everybody tries to get in there because it's the best education

and the best teachers and also you don't pay anything.

And you're taken care of, you're supposed to play small parts

after three years of studying, so you already have five years ahead of you.

I tested to get in there and we were about 75 youngsters

and there are all the actors and the teachers

and the head of theatre and you came out on the stage

and you read whatever you had to read and I had just begun

when somebody said, "That's enough, Miss.

"Out. You can go."

And of course, I thought that I was so awfully bad that they

didn't have the patience to listen through my test.

Well, I went out and I stood there

and looked at the sea in front of the theatre,

we have a lot of water in Stockholm, and I was wondering if I should throw

myself in the water and get it over with right away

because I wanted very badly to become an actress.

However, I got a message to come back to the theatre and I was engaged.

Later on, I asked why they had done it

and it was very cruel of them, of the jury, to do that, and they said,

"The minute you got in and the way you moved on the stage,

"we realised that you had it, we didn't want to waste any more time.

-"You were in."

-Of course, I thought I was out. Yes.

How did you...? You then moved... Eventually, you got to Hollywood.

I didn't have the patience to go through the five years in the school

and being engaged by the theatre, I went directly to the movies.

-Yes, Swedish movies, that's right.

-Yes.

And I worked for a couple of years and then a picture called

-Intermezzo, that you called Escape To Happiness in England.

-Yes.

It was shown in a small art theatre in New York and David Selznick

had a lady who was reading books and looking for talent for him.

She went up into her office building,

the elevator boy was of Swedish descent

and his parents had gone to see this Swedish movie

and said to this lady,

her name is Katherine Brown, "My parents were very much

"taken by a young Swedish actress and I think you are looking for talent,

"why don't you go and see the movie?"

She did. She sent the movie to Mr Selznick

and he asked me to come over to America and do a repeat,

so I owe my career in America to the elevator boy.

That's how it happens in movies, actually! Did you...?

I suppose they got hold of you and they started to try to process you.

Yes. That was very difficult in the beginning

and I don't know where I got my determination and strength from.

I was so young and I wanted so much to try my wings in Hollywood.

But immediately, I was considered too tall

and they were going to do something with my face and knock out my

teeth, put in other teeth and change my eyebrows and make them thinner.

And change my name.

When I heard all that, I got terribly frightened and said,

"I want to go back. I don't want to do all that."

It would be terrible if my first movie was a flop

and I had to go back to Sweden because they wouldn't want me in

Hollywood and I will come back with a changed face and a changed name.

I wouldn't be able to pick up my career after that.

So I refused and refused and refused and then they accepted

my name and what I looked like.

Are you a very stubborn person? Are you a determined person?

Yes, I think I'm quite stubborn when it comes to my work.

I'm willing to listen. I listen to everybody. But I select.

You became, of course, the biggest female box office

-star in the world at that time, didn't you?

-Oh, I don't know.

-Did I really?

-Indeed. I've been doing my homework.

And in fact, there was only one male star whose picture made more

money than you and that was Bing Crosby.

-Oh.

-You didn't know that?

-No, I didn't know that.

-They probably owe you some money!

-LAUGHTER

We'll talk now about the days in Hollywood when, as I say,

you were the sort of biggest box office

star in the world, female box office star.

Can I take you now to the point in your career where it all

sort of crumbled apart?

1950, wasn't it, when you went to make Stromboli?

It sounds as if it crumbled because I left.

I like that, I think.

It needs recapping on. You went to make this film with Rossellini.

You were a married woman, you fell in love with him, you had his child.

-It created the most extraordinary stink, didn't it?

-It certainly did.

-Yes.

-When you look back at it now, what are your feelings?

Well, I feel the same thing as I felt then.

I felt it was my private life and people who judged and wrote

and talked in the American Senate and wanted me

to be for ever excluded from American movies

and even putting my feet in America, that they

didn't know what they were talking about

because they didn't know me, they didn't know what had happened.

And the only judge that I had was my own country.

Now, of course, I have gone back to America and I played in Washington

and 23 years later, another senator went up in the Senate

and very kindly asked pardon for what the other senator had said

and he said not only was I welcome in America but they were honoured

to have my visits, so if you live long enough, you see, it all comes...

Everything is fine again.

Well, that's true about the moral stance that people took then.

Because, I mean, today, if it happened today, who would care?

Yes, I don't think anybody would care.

I don't say that I approve of my behaviour,

it's not that at all, it is just that people

so quickly are ready to judge without knowing the background.

And I think today, we've heard so much and seen so much,

that people have just become more callous.

They don't care and they really don't care

so much about people's private lives any more.

It was extraordinary. I was reading through the press reports

of the time and there was one extraordinary...

-You were described as an "apostle of degradation".

-That's right.

"Dirty, lousy and filthy". I mean, it's quite extraordinary.

But I mean, I'm sure that stuff like that must leave some

kind of scar on you. Some resentment.

If somebody called me that, I'd get very angry indeed.

Yes, I was. But you can't be angry for years and years.

Also, so many people tried to tell me, that there was enormous

love for me, which is true.

The American public has been absolutely wonderful to me.

That their love turned to hatred because my image was the good,

wonderful...woman who had played, but they forgot that - "played",

the saint and a nun and all those suffering women.

They forgot that I was a woman

and maybe not at all what I did on the screen.

That was not me.

But as I say, you can't keep going on thinking about that any more.

I forgot that long ago. I'm back in America, I've been to Hollywood

-and I've played both in the theatre and on the screen.

-Yes.

Can I ask you, though, when you look back now, you've in fact

-divorced Rossellini since then and you are now married again.

-Yes.

Bearing that in mind, it's an impossible question, but

if you could go through it again, would you do the same thing again?

I certainly would. Yes, because I knew what I did.

I didn't do anything that was just haphazard or anything,

I was very conscious of what I was doing.

And I thought, following naturally what I have to follow,

which is my own head, I did the right thing.

Bergman's versatility was underlined by the fact that during her

career, she acted in five different languages.

In 1974, she won a third Oscar, this

time for Best Supporting Actress in Murder On The Orient Express.

Co-stars and directors would call her the ultimate professional.

Here, in an interview with Ronald Eyre,

in the BBC One programme Ingrid Bergman Remembers,

she offers some insight into the daily working life of a movie star.

You obviously have to keep severe hours if you're filming,

you are brought to the studio very early and may well work very late.

Does this suit your temperament? You like an ordered life?

Yes, I think making a movie is a vacation.

I always call that my vacation. It is absolutely no work at all.

You get up early in the morning, what's the difference?

You go to bed a little earlier in the evening.

The hours are just put this way.

You might not be able to go to dinner parties

and go to a theatre or something like that,

but it's for a very short period while the picture is being done.

To get up in the morning is not difficult.

Then, you are taken care of. You see?

They bring the car, they bring you to the studio,

they put you in a chair,

they make you up as well as you can possibly look, they fix your hair,

they bring you in another car and they take you to location or

wherever we shoot, they bring you coffee.

And all they ask of you is to get up there and say a couple of lines

and if you don't say them well, you do it again and again until you

do them well and if you don't do them well, you can always dub them!

No, that is a vacation.

Over modest, I reckon, that assessment of your work.

-No, but it is much easier than the theatre.

-Yes, indeed.

-You don't have to sustain it quite that long.

-No.

You had a chance in For Whom The Bell Tolls of being in touch

-with a major writer.

-Yes.

When you say that you go through a work

and underline the bits you want to say, did you do the same?

Yes, I knew the book by heart and I had all my scenes underlined.

Don't forget this piece of dialogue, don't forget here,

doing this or saying this. Yes, I'm very faithful to the author.

Did you have to put your foot down about including certain

things you thought should be in?

If somebody can persuade me that his idea is better,

I give up immediately.

But it has to make sense. It has to be something that... I think

everything you do in this kind of work has to be worked out 50-50.

Hitchcock used to be wonderful with me because he used to listen to all

my arguments and you thought you had him,

he didn't answer, just sit there and listen, listen,

"I have got him now, he's on my side,"

and then when you've finished he said, "I get your point.

"Now do exactly what I told you to do and fake it!"

And that taught me something, which is very clever,

that you can do certain things that in real life you might not do it,

but you do on the screen because it has to be within the frame

and it has to be there for his camera to get that movement and then,

you know, fake it and you do it.

It seems to me that you're not a person who shows what one can

call nerves usually and if you make a film like Gaslight,

in which you are a wife with a murderer husband

and he's trying to keep you in the house and he's driving you

quietly mad, I think you, Ingrid Bergman, would walk away.

No, I love it!

Love it!

But this performance did produce your first Academy Award, I believe.

# La, la-la, la-la, la-la-la... #

SHE LAUGHS

Oh, Gregory...

What's the matter?

Paula, I don't want to upset you.

If you will put things right when I'm not looking,

-we'll assume it did not happen.

-What? Gregory, what?

Oh, please don't turn your back on me. What has happened?

You mean you don't know?

No, I...

Look...

Yes.

The little picture has been taken down.

Who took it down?

-Why has it been taken down?

-Why indeed?

Why was it taken down before?

Will you please get it from wherever you've hidden it

and it put it back in its place?

But I haven't hidden it. I swear I haven't. Why should I?

Why should... Don't look at me like that.

How did you reconcile yourself with somebody who is obviously,

-psychologically, a bit of a freak that lady was, must have been?

-Yes.

No, but that's fun. I've played that many times. No, it's a good part.

Everything that's a good part is fun to do.

And it's just, as I say, concentration

and actors enjoy acting.

It's up to the director to tell you how to start and how to get up.

For instance in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Victor Fleming hit me.

And he hit me and he shook me and he hit me again.

And I knew he was doing it... I was angry with him for doing it,

doing it in front of the whole crew, but at the same time,

deep down in me, I knew he was doing it

so that I would become hysterical and I was very grateful.

So that's one way of getting a performance. It certainly worked.

-I gave a very good performance!

-Did you hit him back?

No, I didn't. I kissed him.

When did you realise he was doing it for therapeutic purposes?

I think right away, but it was still shocking.

Still, it helps you to shake you up.

I very often ask my directors to do this!

Have you been hit in a film since, by a director or...?

No, I don't think so.

'There was censorship in America, wasn't there?

'The Hayes Office in the '40s was very hot on anybody doing anything.

'Did you have trouble this way? Did you ever try to swing the law?'

'We had trouble several times with these things.

'For instance, if we take Notorious, Hitchcock was very clever

'and invented a love scene, with a kiss,

'that became famous in those days.'

'Looking at it today, I mean, it's laughable

'for what we see nowadays on the screen.

'But a kiss couldn't last more than two seconds, I think it was.

'It had to break, and it couldn't be in a horizontal position,

'even with clothes on. It had to be sitting down or standing up.

'And he invented this thing that they tried to cut, but he won,

'because not one kiss was longer than two seconds,

'but there were so many of them, you see. It looked like...

'That became a very famous love scene.'

-'This is you and Cary Grant, in the film.'

-'Yes.'

There's one thing, obviously, which talking to you, one can't,

one doesn't want to put off very long, which is

talk about Joan of Arc, which seems to be a focal part of your life.

-Yes.

-A key image. When did you first get interested in her

and realise she was something special to you?

When I was a child, I must have read about her in school.

And then I started to collect books and read more and more.

And then I started to collect medals and things, you know, instead of

butterflies and stamps and things like that that children collect.

I thought it was fun to collect Joan of Arcs.

And, naturally, as a man wants to play Hamlet,

a woman wants to play Joan of Arc.

And it never came about in Sweden.

There was not a chance of doing such a picture.

It would have been far too expensive.

And I waited and waited and talked to many people,

and no-one was interested.

And one day I got a telephone call from Maxwell Anderson,

who called me and said,

"I would like to have you for a play about Joan of Arc."

I said, "That's it, you don't have to ask more. I'm coming!"

-So I did my Joan of Arc.

-This was a theatre play?

-A theatre play.

Of course, that became a big success, so, immediately,

people were after the rights to do the movie.

Perhaps there's no answer to this,

but can you put your finger on that thing in Joan of Arc,

which made her important to you for the whole of your life?

'Her courage.'

All I have done, I've done by the command of my Lord.

That's all that I have done well.

How do you know that your voices come from God?

I knew that they came from God because what they commanded me to do was only good.

My lords, I have answered these same questions at Poitiers.

My King charged the Archbishop of Rheims, another loyal and learned

priest, to examine me before I was allowed to lead his army.

Send for the records at Poitiers and you shall have all my answers!

The examination at Poitiers by the Archbishop of Rheims has no relevance.

We are your judges now, and you must answer us.

But you're not fitted to be my judges.

STARTLED DISCUSSION

You are my mortal enemies.

English.

And Burgundians.

All of you!

And you are not the Church!

You are the men of the enemy king, whose orders you obey!

If I am being tried by the Church,

why am I not in a Church prison among women?

I am in an English prison, guarded by English soldiers, chained to my bed.

If I must rise for any purpose, I must ask guards to unlock the bonds.

We, your judges, keep you chained because you attempted to escape.

Isn't that the right of all prisoners of war, to try to escape?

You say that you are my judges.

I don't know if you are, but I say this.

Take care not to judge me wrongly.

For, in truth, I am sent by God and you place yourself in great danger.

Take her back to her cell!

Do you think the film worked as well as the stage version?

Well, we did the absolute honest version that we could find.

'We had a priest from France who had written books about Joan of Arc,

'who was a great researcher, and he came and he was there.'

'He read everything and gave us advice and looked at everything.

'You can imagine how much I had read and how many books I had underlined.

'And the picture, in America, had less success than in Europe.

'But in Europe, Joan of Arc was considered a masterpiece.'

'She must have been, to look at, a fairly scruffy, ordinary girl.'

'She couldn't have possibly stood up to the hard life she had to lead

'and carry the armour and all that if she hadn't been a strong girl.'

-'But the Hollywood picture of her is extremely small.'

-'Yes.

'With colour and with all the combings of hair,

'I think it should have been rough.

'Everybody came up and smoothed it out, and it was very glossy.

'Even the battle scenes.

'They are beautiful, but not in the right sense.'

Did you make an attempt to fight the people patting your hair?

Yes. I usually waited until the director said action,

and then I would shake my head like this. Sometimes I forgot.

I had other things to think about.

In 1980, Bergman made a return to the Parkinson programme,

promoting the story of her life.

It was a book she always swore she'd never write.

APPLAUSE

The last time I talked to you, you said that, in fact,

you didn't think you would ever write your autobiography,

and, in fact, you've been fighting the urge to do so

or the temptation to do so for the past 20 years.

Why have you now decided to do it?

Well, I'll tell you first about Alan Burgess, who is out here somewhere.

He's my co-author, because I didn't do this book alone.

He wrote The Small Woman,

which later became The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness.

-That's Gladys Aylward, isn't it?

-Yes, Gladys Aylward's story.

And they couldn't call it The Small Woman, having me playing the part,

so it was changed to The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

And he said then, which is 22 years ago, "Could I write your story?

"I would like to write about an actress." I said, "Absolutely not.

"Not me." And four years went by and he called up again and said,

"Have you changed your mind?" And I said, "No." And so we continued.

Now, one day I am on the phone again, and hung up after having said,

"No, I am not going to write any memoirs.

"Everybody else writes, but I'm not going to do it."

And my son was there, and he said to me, "But do you realise,

"when you're dead, people will throw themselves on your life story and

they'll take information from gossip, from rumours, what people are saying?

"And how the story is this big and it becomes bigger and bigger.

"And we, your children, can't defend you,

"because we don't know the truth."

That made me sit down and think very carefully, because I know that after

you're dead, they write an awful lot of things about you that's not true.

I mean, there are interviews, people say, "You have said that,"

you didn't say that. There are certain things that are invented.

Alan Burgess called me and I said, "Are you calling about the book?"

And he said, "No, after 20 years, I've given up.

And I said, "Now you can do it." LAUGHTER

So we started. That's three years ago.

Ingrid, can I finally ask you - writing as closely as you have

and in as detailed a fashion about your life involves looking

right back at yourself and thinking about every aspect of your life,

is there any part of your life that you'd have lived differently,

given the chance?

Yes, I'm sure if I had known then what I know now,

I would have been grateful. I could've changed many things.

But there we are. We don't know better.

I did what I thought was right.

I know that when I came back to New York after about nine,

ten years of absence, and I knew the press was after me

and I came alone to face them again,

I had one day in New York to receive the New York Critics Award.

It was the press, television, radio and then the big party at night,

and then off back to Paris, where I was playing.

I was in a play in Paris.

I had only one day to go to New York

and then back and pick up the play again.

I didn't ask my daughter to come to New York,

because I couldn't bear to see her after so many years.

I hadn't seen her then for about five years.

I couldn't stand to see her with all the photographers

and all the press, so I asked her not to come.

I think she's had a very hard time to understand why.

But that was the only thing you'd have changed?

Yes, I wish I had been a little more discreet.

I could have done things, maybe, a little less...

I mean, I'm very open, I'm very frank,

and sometimes that's stupid, you know?

It's better if you hide a little more,

but that's a little bit of hypocrisy, and I don't have that in me either.

Two years after that interview, in 1982,

Bergman died in London on her 67th birthday.

She had been fighting an eight-year battle with breast cancer,

but had carried on acting to the end,

winning an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe that year for her final role

in the television film, A Woman Called Golda.

The obituary writers said,

"She'll always be remembered as an icon of the cinema

"for her poise and beauty and for her three Oscar wins.

"And not least for the film she didn't win an Oscar for -

"Casablanca."

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