Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words Page #4

One day,

I'll ask you for all my treasures.

I've lots of room. But that can wait.

The only problem will be our 16 mm film.

Maybe you'll lend it to me, so I can see

what I looked like in my youth?

Okay. This is take one

with the whole

Rossellini children.

Okay? Are you ready?

For me, if I had to define

One word to define Mama?

I would say charm.

She was the most charming person

I've ever...

Warm and funny and...

Mmm.

I also felt that when she entered a room

she lit up the room.

- But she was humble too.

- Yeah.

This kind of quiet courage

that she had all her life.

Making all these difficult choices.

Changing life all the time.

From Sweden to America. Then to Italy.

Then to France. Then to England.

I mean, changing everything.

Every time starting again

a new life, new friends, new families.

- You have to have some courage to do that.

- A lot of energy too.

Energy, yes.

boom, boom, boom.

And you had to run after her.

I know.

She was perseverant

and very sure of her career.

- She was not a secure person.

- No, no.

I think she actually, as a lot of actors,

she was very shy.

And so when she could be someone else,

it was a relief to her.

- That's what she liked about acting.

- Absolutely.

That she knew where the story was going.

She knew what to say

because she had the text.

And she could overcome

this incredible feeling of shyness.

I wonder if her throwing herself

in life like that and living life so fully

is because she saw these two parents

that didn't have a chance to

Her father, yes, but her mother really

didn't have a chance to live, literally.

She just had a child and she died.

It could be that on

an unconscious level, to say,

"I will live every moment of my life

as intensely as I can."

I'll always keep this diary

and hide it away.

I'm 14 years old,

two months and three days.

I was born on August 29, 1915.

My parents were Friedel Adler

and Justus Bergman.

They baptized me Ingrid.

I was spirited, boisterous,

stubborn and wild.

My mother died in 1918, of jaundice.

I have no recollection of her.

Only photos.

My father died 12 years after my mother,

on July 29, 1929, of cancer.

I'm head of my school's theater club.

I like dancing and being popular.

Yes, I was a very sad child,

and very lonely.

And I think that is how I saved myself

was to invent the characters

that I could talk to,

because I was terribly shy in school

and shy with anybody.

And if I had all these

imaginary characters around me,

I could talk to them, and they answered

back just what I wanted them to say.

And that is how I became an actress,

not knowing what I was doing was acting.

I was so happy to have

gotten out of reality

and come into my world of imagination.

There it is.

That's the house.

Slow down. We can't go in.

So we'll have to look at it from out here.

Let's stop here, on the right.

Ingrid was like a big sister to me.

I was her little sister.

That was how we felt to each other.

She took me under her wing straightaway.

I think it was because

she left Pia in America.

She liked talking to someone

the same age as Pia.

Then of course I grew up, became an adult,

and we became good friends

with each other.

We had a very strong friendship.

One day, my mother said to me,

"You should go to Fregene

because Ingrid Bergman's there."

A cousin of mine had a villa there.

My uncle Roberto and Ingrid

were hiding in that villa

as there were too many paparazzi

in the hotels.

I was in the garden,

waiting for them to call me.

I was looking for pine kernels, you know.

I was sitting on the ground.

Suddenly, I saw two feet.

Her feet.

I went...

It was her. She was smiling at me.

That's how we met.

It made her laugh

that the first thing I met was her feet.

When was your last time

in front of a camera?

It was for Stromboli

- You said you'd never do another film.

I said that because

it was a terrible time.

But... all wounds heal.

I understand.

I want to work again.

I'd rather be lost with them

than to be saved alone.

Did I find the reality in the

movies in Italy that I was looking for?

Yes.

- I did. I certainly did.

But I had then been trained

for ten years in America,

and so many years in Sweden

of working in a different way.

And having a script and a dialogue

and rehearsing time and all that.

I was very upset by many things I had

to do that were all improvisations.

And just make the dialogue up yourself.

Well, I couldn't.

And he said,

"Well, you do this dialogue every day."

I mean, there was

a cocktail party in Europe '51,

and he said, "Make up the conversation,

the way you talk when people come

into the home and have drinks.

Why should I sit and write that down?"

But I couldn't.

You know, I didn't know what to say.

I realized that I was not that type

of an actress that could do that.

Here we are.

I mean, these pictures

were not at all bad pictures.

It was just that people didn't like them.

I didn't think Stromboli

was a bad movie at all.

I thought it was a very touching movie.

I thought it was a wonderful story.

But people were so taken

by the private scandal

that they were against it

from the beginning.

Mama took always a lot

of photographs and films.

She was photographed by her dad,

so I think

It was more than home movies.

He was creating a continuity,

creating a sense of family

and a celebration.

And it was always

with this eye of humor and warmth.

She lost her father and mother so early

that these photographs became

particularly important for her,

in the sense that

they symbolized her roots.

I have hours of film.

Sometimes it's boring.

All parents film their children for

three hours doing the same thing.

But her films are funny and very touching.

Her father gave her

the importance of memories.

The fact she didn't have

a brother or sister was sad for her.

Then she lost her father,

who she loved dearly, so soon, so young.

He must have been fantastic,

as he adored her.

He was very affectionate, present,

and he adored her.

That was very important for Mama.

The Swedish-Italian children

of Joan of Arc are here.

Roberto Rossellini has come

with Ingrid Bergman to Stockholm

where she will play Joan of Arc.

The play is on tour

and they're arriving from Barcelona.

The Rossellini children aren't

very interested in their mother's stake.

They prefer Swedish wooden horses.

For me was mostly a torture to

see her on screen, instead of a pleasure.

And I'll tell you why.

Because, especially on stage,

when she was working on the theater.

Um, she was, before going on stage,

she was suffering so much.

She was so nervous, sweating,

that for a child, you feel that.

And I was really kind of panicking,

saying what is she doing.

And then, for an example, uh,

the first time I see her on stage,

it was during, uh

when she was doing Joan of Arc.

And so, as I tell you, in the beginning,

so nervous before going on stage.

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