Ingrid Bergman won the hearts of American moviegoers in David O. Selznick’s 1939 romantic melodrama Intermezzo, which was actually a remake of a 1936 Swedish film she starred in. The latter is included in this Criterion Eclipse set along with five more of her Swedish movies, which serve as an introduction to Bergman’s early career. Intermezzo, a tale of adultery as mawkish as its Hollywood cousin, was directed by Gustaf Molander, as were two other features from 1938: Dollar, a rather strained attempt at a screwball comedy in which Bergman plays a tart-tongued actress, and A Woman’s Face (remade in English with Joan Crawford), a contrived melodrama in which Bergman’s character morphs from a hardened blackmailer into a repentant and protective governess after her disfigurement is corrected by a kindly surgeon. The other films in the set are Edvin Adolphson’s The Count of Old Town (1935), a charming comedy in which Bergman debuts as the most sensible member of an ensemble of neighborhood eccentrics who are bedeviled by a jewel thief sought by the bumbling police; Gustav Edgren’s Walpurgis Night (1935), a curiously didactic drama with a strong anti-abortion stance, starring Bergman as a secretary in love with her married boss; and Per Lindberg’s June Night (1940)—her final Swedish film before departing permanently for Hollywood—with Bergman as a young woman who survives after being shot by her boyfriend, and then goes to Stockholm, where she falls for the fiancé of the gentle nurse who befriends her. While hardly masterpieces, these well-made Swedish films underscore the fact that Bergman was a magnetic screen presence well before her appearance in such Hollywood classics as Casablanca and Notorious. Recommended. (F. Swietek)
Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years
Criterion, 6 discs, 519 min., in Swedish w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $69.99 Volume 33, Issue 4
Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years
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