HAPPY BIRTHDAY, INGRID! Ramblings, quotespam, picspam, etc etc.
... and happy death day, too, I guess, for the Fabulous Swede was born on August 29th, 1915, and died on the same day, 67 years later. Obviously, there is no better excuse for blatant, cheesy, weepy, obsessive fangirling. Thus, I bring you ramblings by moi, then quotes by people who know far more about these things than I do, and last but not least, PICTURES. Most of those I scanned from my own collection, so I really hope there's some you haven't seen yet :). Anyways...
Ingrid Bergman is probably, of all the people I fangirl, the one I feel closest to and maybe the one I can identify best with. I feel, when reading about her, that I can understand what she was about, and I like her. These days, she is mostly remembered for the 'good girl' image she had in the 1940s, but really, she is so much more interesting and complex than just that.
Once, in the late 1940s, Ingrid said that she dreaded going back home (to her first husband), because then she’d have to ‘go back into the cage, sit in the sun, obey Petter, be sober and look eighteen years old’, and I think that was a very accurate description of what not just Petter, but the film-going world expected of her. She had made it big in Hollywood with an impossibly innocent, almost virginal public image - an image she had contributed to herself, because she was too clever not to realize how exactly she was being sold in the USA - and for a while, that worked fine. When she first came to America, after all, she was pretty young and pretty naïve, but throughout the following years, as she got more famous, she adapted and grew up and that image became much more like a cage, because she did smoke and she did drink and she did stay out late and she did a lot of the things other stars did, as well. Part of her problem was that she couldn’t conform anymore to the role the world, the studio, her husband and, perhaps, she herself had created for her; that of a kind of modern Virgin Mary, one star they could safely idolize and name their children after.
And Ingrid was far more than that, in many different ways. She was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for and she could be very cool and level-headed in matters of business, and yet at the same time, too, in her private life, there was this side to her that was deeply insecure and extremely sensitive. She had a healthy dose of common sense, a lot of strength and good humour, and yet at the same time she could be very dramatic, very unhappy and always a little bit lonely.
About this, she once said that her main problem was that in a way, she spent all her life searching for a romance like her parents had had. Her mother and father had both died when she was a young child, but she had read their love-letters when she was eighteen, and she believed that one day, she would find something similar to what they had experienced, and then everything would be alright, but she never did. I think she loved her three husbands very much, and they were three completely different people who were very strong characters in their own completely different ways, but when one tries to find the One True Love of Ingrid’s life, I think the answer would be ‘her work’ more than anything.
She blamed herself for losing Lars, her third husband, because she felt she had failed to give him the time together than he needed so badly. While that was partly due to the great guilt complex she always felt towards her loved ones, that idea was probably partly accurate, as well, and although she understood the problem, she didn’t adapt because she knew that her work was really what she lived for. She did, however, take more than a year off work in the 1960s when her daughter Isabella was seriously ill.
There’s so much more to be said about Ingrid Bergman, but I’ll end here - she was so beautiful and smart and naïve and sweet and cold and warm and reasonable and temperamental and level-headed and melodramatic and talented all at once, and I love her for all those things. She may not have been a saint, but she was undeniably… human.
WARNING. This LJ-cut is probably NOT dial-up friendly. At all. Sorry for that!
“Tall, beautiful, emotional and a superb actress, Ingrid Bergman is a new addition to the American screen worth raving about.”
David Hanna in Film Bulletin about Intermezzo
“I don’t fight the years. Every woman, and I include myself, feels a little sad over the thought of growing old when the wrinkles show up around the eyes and on the neck. It’s demoralizing. I’ve never had my face lifted. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it.”
Ingrid Bergman
“Ingrid didn’t see that life is not a series of episodes, but a continuum. If one was in endless motion, then one risked becoming nothing but memories, anecdotes, clippings and reels of film.”
As Time Goes By, Lawrence Leamer
“I remember that when I had reached my last teen year - 19, I felt so old and afraid to leave and become twenty. I remember I made a wish that I would never feel older than 19, and I believe my wish came true.”
Ingrid Bergman, letter to her daughter, Pia
“Ingrid suffered a great deal, for very real reasons, and because she was made that way.”
Anthony Quinn
“At some point, you have to make peace with adverse circumstances. Fighting is a very tiring thing. At a certain point, when it is futile, you have to bend. Bending is a part of life.”
Ingrid Bergman
“Here was Ingrid not only physically accessible but seemingly accessible emotionally, a star whose great mystery was her lack of mystery.”
As Time Goes By, Lawrence Leamer
“I am a flyttfågel [bird of passage]. Ever since I was a little girl I have hungered for something new, something different. Much as I saw and experienced, it was never enough. I tried very hard to get through the daily tristesse, looking for happiness and satisfaction. But I didn’t understand what kind of happiness and peace I wanted.”
Ingrid Bergman, letter to her sister-in-law Anna-Britta
“She was a presence. She was Ilsa and Maria and Sister Benedict and Dr. Constance Peterson and Alicia Huberman and Anastasia. She was a quarter century of memories.”
As Time Goes By, Lawrence Leamer
“I was the shiest person in the world, but I had a roaring lion inside me that wouldn’t shut up.”
Ingrid Bergman
“Ingrid had that beautiful side, and the other side, too. She was a smart woman and had a coldness about her. She could fend for herself and still need a man. One side was completely open and the other completely steel.”
Alf Kjellin
“Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Some people believe in little or nothing, nevertheless they give up their lives for that little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we live it, and we believe in living it, and then it's gone. But to surrender what you are, and to live without belief - that's more terrible than dying - more terrible than dying young.”
Joan of Lorraine, Maxwell Anderson, as quoted by Ingrid in her autobiography
“I have always thought that I will go on acting and acting and acting because I belong to these people of the theatre and the movies and the make-believe world we create. I know the opening nights are agony, but even that binds us together like a family. Every evening we go out there on the stage and share our beautiful world. And you need never give up. After all, they always need an old witch in some production or other, especially around Christmas time. So at the end of my life, I’ll be ready and there.”
Ingrid Bergman, My Story, last lines
Ingrid looking kind of insane and kind of adorable with Jennifer Jones, who totally stole her Oscar that year.
Awww, Joan of Arc.
I don't know why, but I like this picture. It's so un-Ingrid, but it looks so serious and elegant.
See, I want to dislike Rossellini, because he ended up behaving like a bit of a jerk, but sometimes Ingrid + Rossellini = really quite OTP. Awww.
Damn, I really want to see The Visit.
I love this picture! She looks so young and innocent and yet oddly crazy.
I love her For Whom The Bell Tolls outfit. Apparently, so did she. It is love.
Whoever told the poor Swede that this hair was any kind of a good idea in any universe ever? It looks oddly cute, though, in a wrong way.
Ingmar Bergman trying to convince Ingrid to do something she doesn't want to do. He is a very very brave man.
FLAIL. SQUEE. AW.
Ingrid trying very hard not to, you know, suffocate. When pregnant, always go inhale dangerous volcano fumes, kids. Auntie Ingrid has said so.
Three Oscar winners! Despite the fact that I like Double Indemnity better than I like Gaslight, Ingrid winning an Oscar is always a good thing. AND SHE LOOKS ADORABLE ON THIS PIC.
Arch of Triumph. Am I the only person who likes this movie?
I want to adopt Ingrid as my Swedish granny. Because she's the most adorable Swedish granny ever.
This is probably one of my favourite pics of her. I'm unsure as to where exactly it is from, but I think it's love.
Crazy hair, but awww.
“Ultimately, most movies remain locked in their period, even if the personality of the star manages to transcend that period. It is only the greatest stars who achieve those half-dozen or so films that remain perpetually seductive, films that render them, in effect, immortal: Casablanca, Gaslight, Spellbound, Notorious, Journey to Italy, Indiscreet, Autumn Sonata.
Ingrid Bergman died in 1982.
Ingrid Bergman lives.”
Love,
Lies
Ingrid Bergman is probably, of all the people I fangirl, the one I feel closest to and maybe the one I can identify best with. I feel, when reading about her, that I can understand what she was about, and I like her. These days, she is mostly remembered for the 'good girl' image she had in the 1940s, but really, she is so much more interesting and complex than just that.
Once, in the late 1940s, Ingrid said that she dreaded going back home (to her first husband), because then she’d have to ‘go back into the cage, sit in the sun, obey Petter, be sober and look eighteen years old’, and I think that was a very accurate description of what not just Petter, but the film-going world expected of her. She had made it big in Hollywood with an impossibly innocent, almost virginal public image - an image she had contributed to herself, because she was too clever not to realize how exactly she was being sold in the USA - and for a while, that worked fine. When she first came to America, after all, she was pretty young and pretty naïve, but throughout the following years, as she got more famous, she adapted and grew up and that image became much more like a cage, because she did smoke and she did drink and she did stay out late and she did a lot of the things other stars did, as well. Part of her problem was that she couldn’t conform anymore to the role the world, the studio, her husband and, perhaps, she herself had created for her; that of a kind of modern Virgin Mary, one star they could safely idolize and name their children after.
And Ingrid was far more than that, in many different ways. She was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for and she could be very cool and level-headed in matters of business, and yet at the same time, too, in her private life, there was this side to her that was deeply insecure and extremely sensitive. She had a healthy dose of common sense, a lot of strength and good humour, and yet at the same time she could be very dramatic, very unhappy and always a little bit lonely.
About this, she once said that her main problem was that in a way, she spent all her life searching for a romance like her parents had had. Her mother and father had both died when she was a young child, but she had read their love-letters when she was eighteen, and she believed that one day, she would find something similar to what they had experienced, and then everything would be alright, but she never did. I think she loved her three husbands very much, and they were three completely different people who were very strong characters in their own completely different ways, but when one tries to find the One True Love of Ingrid’s life, I think the answer would be ‘her work’ more than anything.
She blamed herself for losing Lars, her third husband, because she felt she had failed to give him the time together than he needed so badly. While that was partly due to the great guilt complex she always felt towards her loved ones, that idea was probably partly accurate, as well, and although she understood the problem, she didn’t adapt because she knew that her work was really what she lived for. She did, however, take more than a year off work in the 1960s when her daughter Isabella was seriously ill.
There’s so much more to be said about Ingrid Bergman, but I’ll end here - she was so beautiful and smart and naïve and sweet and cold and warm and reasonable and temperamental and level-headed and melodramatic and talented all at once, and I love her for all those things. She may not have been a saint, but she was undeniably… human.
WARNING. This LJ-cut is probably NOT dial-up friendly. At all. Sorry for that!
“Tall, beautiful, emotional and a superb actress, Ingrid Bergman is a new addition to the American screen worth raving about.”
David Hanna in Film Bulletin about Intermezzo
“I don’t fight the years. Every woman, and I include myself, feels a little sad over the thought of growing old when the wrinkles show up around the eyes and on the neck. It’s demoralizing. I’ve never had my face lifted. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it.”
Ingrid Bergman
“Ingrid didn’t see that life is not a series of episodes, but a continuum. If one was in endless motion, then one risked becoming nothing but memories, anecdotes, clippings and reels of film.”
As Time Goes By, Lawrence Leamer
“I remember that when I had reached my last teen year - 19, I felt so old and afraid to leave and become twenty. I remember I made a wish that I would never feel older than 19, and I believe my wish came true.”
Ingrid Bergman, letter to her daughter, Pia
“Ingrid suffered a great deal, for very real reasons, and because she was made that way.”
Anthony Quinn
“At some point, you have to make peace with adverse circumstances. Fighting is a very tiring thing. At a certain point, when it is futile, you have to bend. Bending is a part of life.”
Ingrid Bergman
“Here was Ingrid not only physically accessible but seemingly accessible emotionally, a star whose great mystery was her lack of mystery.”
As Time Goes By, Lawrence Leamer
“I am a flyttfågel [bird of passage]. Ever since I was a little girl I have hungered for something new, something different. Much as I saw and experienced, it was never enough. I tried very hard to get through the daily tristesse, looking for happiness and satisfaction. But I didn’t understand what kind of happiness and peace I wanted.”
Ingrid Bergman, letter to her sister-in-law Anna-Britta
“She was a presence. She was Ilsa and Maria and Sister Benedict and Dr. Constance Peterson and Alicia Huberman and Anastasia. She was a quarter century of memories.”
As Time Goes By, Lawrence Leamer
“I was the shiest person in the world, but I had a roaring lion inside me that wouldn’t shut up.”
Ingrid Bergman
“Ingrid had that beautiful side, and the other side, too. She was a smart woman and had a coldness about her. She could fend for herself and still need a man. One side was completely open and the other completely steel.”
Alf Kjellin
“Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Some people believe in little or nothing, nevertheless they give up their lives for that little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we live it, and we believe in living it, and then it's gone. But to surrender what you are, and to live without belief - that's more terrible than dying - more terrible than dying young.”
Joan of Lorraine, Maxwell Anderson, as quoted by Ingrid in her autobiography
“I have always thought that I will go on acting and acting and acting because I belong to these people of the theatre and the movies and the make-believe world we create. I know the opening nights are agony, but even that binds us together like a family. Every evening we go out there on the stage and share our beautiful world. And you need never give up. After all, they always need an old witch in some production or other, especially around Christmas time. So at the end of my life, I’ll be ready and there.”
Ingrid Bergman, My Story, last lines
Ingrid looking kind of insane and kind of adorable with Jennifer Jones, who totally stole her Oscar that year.
Awww, Joan of Arc.
I don't know why, but I like this picture. It's so un-Ingrid, but it looks so serious and elegant.
See, I want to dislike Rossellini, because he ended up behaving like a bit of a jerk, but sometimes Ingrid + Rossellini = really quite OTP. Awww.
Damn, I really want to see The Visit.
I love this picture! She looks so young and innocent and yet oddly crazy.
I love her For Whom The Bell Tolls outfit. Apparently, so did she. It is love.
Whoever told the poor Swede that this hair was any kind of a good idea in any universe ever? It looks oddly cute, though, in a wrong way.
Ingmar Bergman trying to convince Ingrid to do something she doesn't want to do. He is a very very brave man.
FLAIL. SQUEE. AW.
Ingrid trying very hard not to, you know, suffocate. When pregnant, always go inhale dangerous volcano fumes, kids. Auntie Ingrid has said so.
Three Oscar winners! Despite the fact that I like Double Indemnity better than I like Gaslight, Ingrid winning an Oscar is always a good thing. AND SHE LOOKS ADORABLE ON THIS PIC.
Arch of Triumph. Am I the only person who likes this movie?
I want to adopt Ingrid as my Swedish granny. Because she's the most adorable Swedish granny ever.
This is probably one of my favourite pics of her. I'm unsure as to where exactly it is from, but I think it's love.
Crazy hair, but awww.
“Ultimately, most movies remain locked in their period, even if the personality of the star manages to transcend that period. It is only the greatest stars who achieve those half-dozen or so films that remain perpetually seductive, films that render them, in effect, immortal: Casablanca, Gaslight, Spellbound, Notorious, Journey to Italy, Indiscreet, Autumn Sonata.
Ingrid Bergman died in 1982.
Ingrid Bergman lives.”
Love,
Lies