Ich bin Ingrid Bergman

My thoughts about the film are the same as Isabella's about the correspondance; I thought there would be a story in here about a woman becoming a star in Hollywood, about struggle and cinema, but its just all children. Which would be fine, if not for Bergman's tendancy to shy away from thinking/writing about the negatives in that relationship, and once even from acting it out. Vague, but hypnotic.

I cannot disagree more with the post above. Notorious is a well regarded Hitchcock classic. It was Bergman's film and she gave the vest performance from any Hitch films. Journey to Italy is considered the first modern film, a major classic of cinema and hailed by such influential directors as Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Scorsese and of course Bazan. Bogie will not be a romantic idol without the radiant and luminous Bergman. Can you picture another major actress at that time in the role of Ilsa? All three films are on the list of Sight and Sound 2012 best films ever poll.

And there are still a large audience for films such as Gas light, spellbound, Anastasia and Autumn sonata.

Ingrid Bergman – "In Her Own Words" (2015) Ingrid Bergman was a rare and brave woman, and she was of course a big and genuine actress of the very few who lived and died for art no matter the consequences for herself, her children and her husbands.

This documentary is not bad, but it's not successful either. The reason why is that the documentary is simply too private, it does not become interesting to a larger audience. It's mainly private film footage (8 and 16 mm) and diary quotations over and over again. And we see and listen to Ingrid's children telling the same – more or less – again and again, and not one single bad or negative thing is said about their mother. I was not convinced. The documentary runs for 114 minutes and sadly it feels like 228 minutes.

What have Stig Bjökman (the writer and director), Dominika Daubenbüchel and Stina Gardell been thinking about? This documentary would have been complete and beautifully put together IF it have had at least 3 blocks of montages with clips from Bergman's greatest parts. We got nearly 8 seconds from "Casablanca" and that was it!!! We should have SEEN and WATCHED Ingrid in Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious" and "Spellbound" – not someone telling us about her acting in these movies! And we should have seen clips with Ingrid and Cary Copper in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" or seen Ingrid afraid to be insane in "Gaslight" or Ingrid together with Goldie Hawn in "Cactus Flower" – and I could go on and on! But we didn't. There's a saying that goes: "don't tell, show!" someone is this production should have whispered this saying to Stig Björkman.

It's not until the last 10 minutes that this documentary really speeds up and get's very interesting when we meet Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini and Liv Ullmann. Weaver recalls what it was like being on stage with Ingrid in her first professional job was as an understudy in Sir John Gielguds production of "The Constant Wife". Liv Ullmann is telling us about how Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman left the set when they were making "Autumn Sonata", because they could not agree on how a dialog should be. All on the set could still hear them quarrel very loudly. Bergman and Bergman came back, Ingmar got his will and they all continued. Now that would have been interesting to see and hear much more of, especially because the movie was about a mother abandon her children for the art.

What a shame, because Ingrid and we have deserved much much more.

Icon is becoming an almost useless word. Therefore, it's good Stig Björkman puts his focus on Ingrid Bergman as a human, and let's face it, how many of her pictures are interesting today, except Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman? Casablanca is a Bogart movie.

Many amateur clips. Her children talks about her mostly being somewhere else. The only one who shows some bitterness between the lines is the son.

But anyway this Stig Björkman focus doesn't really have the potential to make us something more than shallow watchers. A rather entertaining story, but the entertainment isn't enough. You miss the analysis.

If you have any recollection of screen legend Ingrid Bergman, Stig Björkman's 2015 documentary is a must-see simply because it follows her emotionally complex life purely through archival footage and stills (including her own home movies) and her four children none of whom are resentful of her partial abandonment of them. Gratefully there are no film scholars or celebrities (other than true colleagues Sigourney Weaver and Liv Ullmann) remarking on her life and career because the point of the film was to understand her feelings directly through her voice even though it's fellow Swedish actress Alicia Vikander who is reciting Bergman's diary entries. Released on her centenary, the most memorable section was her first Hollywood screen test where her breathtaking natural beauty took hold. The rest of the film made complete sense from there.