Hedda Gabler

"Hedda Gabler" is a tough theatrical nut to crack and this rendition hardly even tries. One could suspect that they were either just doing a rush job without any proper role development and rehearsals or that director didn't have the first clue and expected actors to do it on their own. Alas they couldn't. The result is so pathetic and unconvincing that some roles even look comic at times.

It is instructional however to see how pathetic and inept Ingrid Bergman turned out to be when expected to develop a complex theatrical role. Like she was posing for a picture book, unable to breathe any life into Hedda. Makes you wonder how many of her other roles were really the result of detailed direction and precision cuts. This film has long takes and Ingrid looks thoroughly disconnected and artificial in them.

She apparently tried her best and at the beginning she was doing well, say up to the scene with Thea which uses precision cuts to show Hedda's cat&mouse game with defenseless Thea and transition from horrified to relieved that Thea doesn't really know anything about her and Lovborg's past. After that she just got more and more lost (together with director) in Ibsen's ambiguity, not knowing what to do, where to turn and not being able to do believable transition into madness.

This can also serve as a good warning that casting an actress as Hedda just because she's Scandinavian is a dangerous thing to do. Ibsen is ambiguous and requires full scale Stanislavski process and a lot of time and serious work to do it well. Glenda Jackson and her director did theatrical production first and the result was much more consistent.

A TV production with a stellar cast, in which Ingrid Bergman shines the best, is unfortunately a brutally condensed, stubbed up adaptation of the classic play.

This production may have it's flaws, but then it an extremely edited version of a much longer play, allowing for no development in any of the character. Ibsen is at best very difficult to perform, even for the best actors. I once saw a production of 'Ghosts' that had me rolling in the aisles because it was so badly executed. Here at least you have some of the world's best actors. Yes, Richardson is badly miscast as an aging roue, but that is the director's fault. Like have Gielgud play Don Juan, you just can't believe it no matter how good the actor is. And Redgrave and Howard are excellent as always. I guess the TV producers of the day wanted to put on something 'classy' as opposed to the mindless drivel of Lucy and Gleason and others. Unfortueately the result was the 'Reader's Digest condensed' version of a classic.

I was initially quite nervous about Ingrid Bergman's casting here. Her eponymous character calls for a woman with quite a cruel streak in her and I feared she might not have the wherewithal. Well, though she isn't great, she does well enough as the plotting woman married to the loving but underwhelming "George" (Sir Michael Redgrave). Bored and restless, she finds a new game to play when her ex-beau "Lovborg" (a competent Trevor Howard) arrives. He is still keen on the now married woman, and she plays the part of distant and alluring in equal measure until she realises that she does not have a monopoly on his affections and her intellectual claws come out! This is one of those tea-time dramas we became accustomed to in the UK where a story with a great deal of nuance and slow-roasted characterisations was condensed into 75 minutes. To get any enjoyment from this at all, you must remember that it is a television adaptation - and a rather static one at that - that cannot possibly do proper justice to Ibsen's original work. The cast, though, work well to give us a sense of just what the author had in mind and this also ought to encourage us to read the play. I would suggest another, extended version on screen bit surprisingly, I don't think there is one - not in the English language anyway.

Yes, the script (from a translation by English actress, producer, director Eva Le Gallienne) is abridged from Ibsen, for television. No matter. This (and Ibsen's other plays) is incredibly difficult, demanding theatre - for performers and audiences. Every character's truth lies beneath the dialogue and action: the rich conflict and drama isn't on the surface.

It's easy for everybody to overplay or underplay Ibsen, and so wreck the carefully crafted builds and effects.

To study the differences in productions, compare this with the much later Diana Rigg production for television. In fact, there is no comparison.

Bergman wrings incredibly detailed and nuanced range from Hedda; always bordering on being "dangerous" without ever appearing "deranged." A consummate actress portraying a consummate, stifled, destructive actress.

Alternately steely cold, girlish, seductive, flirtatious, calculating, distraught, despondent, taunting, sorrowful, gleeful, provocative - sometimes within mere moments - Bergman's skills are a wonder to behold, even at the camera's close range.

So are those of Richardson, Redgrave, Howard and the rest.

Diana Rigg, no slouch as an actress, seems almost one-note when viewed against Bergman's triumph (though that may well be Rigg's director's fault).

Hedda is an easy character to make boring, nihilistic and ugly - which would repulse rather than spellbind an audience.

Bergman never lets go of her audience, or her colleagues; delivering Ibsen's particular, peculiar, tragic Hedda Gabler in all her ultimately monumental crumbling pathos and final loss of any shred of hope.

Magnificent!