Day Six of our slalom ride through the Holidays finds us in a remote spot. Imagine that it is December, 1942. You are one of America's "arctic warriors", a long way from home in a seemingly forgotten spot at Fort Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska in a time of global conflict. The war and your family and friends seem a long way away from this chilly spot on the map, (though you may have to decamp for hotter spots around the globe any day). You look up one day from such thoughts and see..what? A smiling Viking goddess? A woman whose delicate, falling laughter has the sound of distant bells? Or one of the biggest movie stars in the world at that moment in time--
Ingrid Bergman?
These servicemen sharing their Christmas dinner with Miss
Bergman in the mess hall may have been more nonplussed by this apparition from tinseltown than they let on. If you notice, while they are gathered around her, huddled close, perhaps to bask in the warmth she emanates, none of them quite seem to be able to make eye contact with her. Perhaps they are a bit afraid to look too closely, for fear that such a vision might disappear.
Arriving in Hollywood in the late '30s at the behest of producer David O. Selznick to remake her breakthrough film role in Sweden in
Intermezzo (1936) in an English version, she seemed refreshingly natural, a big broth of a girl, with dark blonde hair, full brows, and--despite her beauty--an expressive gift for conveying a range of emotions, though Hollywood, ever on the lookout for another "flavor of the month", seemed to like her in vanilla roles. Some especially choice moments that avoided the saccharine in her work of this decade may be found in the distracted wife in
Gaslight (1944), the besotted shrink who lost
all clinical detachment in
Spellbound (1945), the "bad" party girl in
Notorious (1946) whose initially cheap wardrobe and dubious political genealogy make Cary Grant less than gallant around her. While several of these films were deemed critical and audience successes, particularly a little movie called
Casablanca (1942), a few personal faves are her role as the tormented barmaid in
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), an unlikely but still magnetic Spanish girl named Maria in
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and her fatalistic refugee wandering through darkest Paris in
Arch of Triumph (1948).
Bergman's admirable USO tour of the frozen North may have had a secondary benefit for her. It allowed her to escape her blander roles and Hollywood's scrutiny, since her early marriage to a rather disapproving Swedish dentist seemed to undermine her self-confidence and longing for artistic and personal fulfillment. Meeting neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini at the end of the '40s changed all that, leading to an international scandal, (she was even condemned on the floor of the U.S. Senate). Their union did not last either, but it produced some good films, particularly
Europa '51 (1952) &
Viaggio in Italia (1954). Eventually
Bergman even worked with Jean Renoir in
Elena et Les Hommes (1956), a partially successful cinematic collaboration that seemed ideal, since it is hard to imagine a more Junoesque, or Renoiresque actress than Ingrid. Working throughout her life to perfect her craft and learn from the best, her presence in a film elevates it, and you, when you spend time with her on film. Of herself, she once commented, sounding puzzled by her own nature that "I was the shyest human ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn't shut up." Though she worked in the theater and television as well as movies, she saw "[f]ilm as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."
I certainly hope that those Army Air Corpsmen at the above dinner each got a copy of this photo, since who would ever believe it happened otherwise?
