Liv Ullmann acting with Ingrid Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s muse, collaborator and one-time lover, Liv Ullmann became the emblem of arthouse cinema throughout the 60s and 70s. In recent years she has moved behind the camera, directing the family saga Sofie and her current film, Faithless, from a script by Bergman.

Q: W hat was it like acting with Ingrid Bergman?

LU: Working with Ingrid was an incredible joy. I admire her so much. What was good with her was that she was so honest, she came out with everything she felt, and that is sometimes difficult if you work with somebody like Ingmar. You respect him so much, and I’m using this word genius, and I mean it from my heart, but sometimes I am also using it in a special way... to explain... Ingrid was important because she did not qualify him as anything other than a director. I used to sit there and admire her, everything that she said that she did. We played a mother and a daughter, and we said to Ingmar, “Why are you making the mother so unsympathetic, just because she also wants to have a career. Can we change the words?” And Ingmar said, “No, you cannot change the words.” We said, “Can we play against the character?” And he said, “Yes, you are actresses, you can do that.”

Then there was this incredible episode happening when we did Autumn Sonata. I am the daughter and I am blaming my mother for everything I am in life. I am more than 40 years old, and there comes a time when you cannot blame your mother anymore. Somehow you are living your own life. But she goes on blaming her mother. So it is this scene where the mother is blaming her daughter and I had three pages of a monologue telling the mother how terrible she’d been, look at the misery of my life and it’s all your fault. I go on and on and on through a whole night. And in the morning, Ingrid Bergman, as the mother, has two lines. “Please, hold me. Please, love me.” And I thought that was beautiful. If I had to do that, I would really make people cry, I would do it tenderly.

So I did all my lines, and Ingrid just sat there, and I did the hate and the anger and everything. The camera was turned on to Ingrid and she was to say, “Please, hold me. Please, love me.” But she says, “No! I’m not going to say that. I want to slap her in the face and leave the room.” And it was incredible - no one has talked to him in

that way. He was red and he said, “That is your line.” “I’m not doing it.”

So they started to yell and went out of the studio. We all looked at each other and thought, “The movie is going to end here.” We heard the voices out there, really high voices - the genius and the actress. Then suddenly the door opens and they come in and, of course, he has won; and he should win, they are his words. But she, she was saying the lines... but if you look at that, she says, “Please, hold me. Please, love me”, but her face was mirroring every woman who has gone through their lives saying, “I’m sorry.” and “What can I do for you?” And she has the face of somebody who is so fed up of saying, “Excuse me for being alive.” I think it was masterful. So Ingmar got what he wanted, he got the lines, but he also got a really incredible performance. Maybe the whole thing was staged by him. That I don’t know. But the result is fantastic.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1) What impression have you got about Ingmar Bergman as a film-director?

2) What does Liv Ullmann think about her heroine in the film “Autumn Sonata”?

3) What does Liv Ullmann think about Ingrid Bergman as an actress?

Дата добавления: 2015-07-21