Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Top 10 Ingrid Bergman performances (that I've seen)



10. The Bells of St. Mary's: She brings such forceful joie de vivre to her character, which is quite impressive when you realize that her first marriage was crumbling at that time. The movie as a whole I find rather mawkish and overly sentimental, so I have to be in the mood but ... the performance is good. 9. Spellbound: Here we go the other direction. Love love LOVE the movie, the dream sequences like you mentioned (and also shots such as the one at the end with Dr. Murchison in the office with the gun). Her performance, on the other hand, while very good (because let's face it, when is she not?), did grab much as much as the story did. 8. For Whom The Bell Tolls: An underrated classic. Nobody really talks about this one anymore. It's long, almost three hours if I remember correctly, and it's based on Hemingway's novel of the Spanish Civil War. Her character, for all intents and purposes, is "The Girl", but she takes a non-showy part and steals every scene she's in with layers of complexity. Even despite her and co-lead Gary Cooper not having much chemistry together, this is still one of her top ten performances for sure. 7. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness: Another less-known gem, and another epic set in a land and time that doesn't get touched on much. Bergman carries this film (along with some plucky children). I would venture a guess she's onscreen for 85-90% of the film's runtime. The film flubs the landing a bit, seemingly trying to shovel contemporary Western values into what had been a very open-minded framework, but her performance is, as usual, excellent. 6. Autumn Sonata: I love me some Ingmar Bergman almost as much as I love me some Ingrid Bergman (the fact that I have partially Swedish background no doubt is a reason), but oddly enough, this for me is almost mid-tier Bergman. Ingmar, that is. Ingrid's performance is wonderful; one moment you're furious at her, the next your heart breaks, and she makes you feel it all. The film, however, didn't engage me as much. 5. Anastasia: She won best actress in 1956 for this role, and while that was partially political as a "welcome back to Hollywood" type gesture, her performance itself is the stuff of greatness. She makes you live Anna Anderson's journey with her, from the traumatized anxiety in which we find her, to slowly becoming her own person. Is she really the Grand Duchess Anastasia? History has since proven she was not, and the film is ambivalent -- but I found it fascinating that Anna figured out who she was as a person, while trying to pretend to be somebody else. 4. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: This is the 1941 version with Ingrid, Lana Turner, and Spencer Tracy as the title characters. A delightful about face from the angelic characters she was usually cast as, Ingrid hams it up here playing a bawdy barmaid (read: prostitute in silver screen parlance) who falls in love with Tracy. It's frankly quite frightening to witness the sassy, flamboyant Ivy become confused and defeated by Jekyll's reign of terror. Not just an against-type performance but a multi-layered one as well. 3. Gaslight: Which leads us into the film that won Ingrid her first Oscar, in 1944. Over the past ten years or so this film has enjoyed quite the renaissance, as the term gaslighting has entered the lexicon. This is great because it has brought entire new legions of fans to classic cinema. The flip side is that because of this it seems to have been put into a box, with the focus being only on the actions of Boyer's character, and not enough attention given to Paula and her struggles to maintain her sanity. I don't like that they eventually turned to a Joseph Cotten-ex machina for the ending, but I do relish Paula's supreme enjoyment of the moment when the tables have turned. 2. Casablanca: This was a tough one for me, because like you I had this and Notorious as my one-two combination, natch. I'm putting this second for reasons I'll explain later. But this is the film that made me fall in love with Ingrid Bergman, as I think it did for us all. Knowing that she and her co-stars had no idea how the film would end as they were making it meant that they -- especially Ingrid -- had to shade their characters with nuance, and it made all the difference in the world. Here's looking at you, kid. 1. Notorious: The reason I chose this as my number one is that it has one of the greatest performances in cinema (Bergman's) in one of the greatest films ever. The nonchalant bravado that Alicia shows at the beginning is an act that masks her self-loathing and insecurity. She falls head over heels for Cary Grant and we feel it -- and then we feel her heartbreak when he throws her to the wolves in the name of duty. We feel her longing for Devlin even as she curses him. We feel her pity for Alex (Claude Rains in a supporting role for the ages) even as she despises him. As Alex and his mother siphon the life and energy out of her, we feel that too. It's an amazing performance, severely overlooked in my opinion. Funny how the Academy can reward performances in which an actor puts on a wig and a fake nose, but ignore an emotionally gutwrenching performance that carries you through the ringer with it.

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