OVP: Autumn Sonata (1978)

Film: Autumn Sonata (1978)

Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Lena Nyman, Halvar Bjork

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Ingrid Bergman, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Ingrid Bergman-click here to learn more about Ms. Bergman (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week, we were discussing Ingrid Bergman and her infamous affair with Italian Roberto Rossellini, which resulted in one of the most successful (creatively) periods of her career, even if it also meant that she was essentially a pariah in Hollywood.  This didn't last though-scandal can destroy a career, but Ingrid Bergman wasn't an actress that could be brought down that easily.  In 1956, she made an unexpected comeback in Fox's smash hit Anastasia, which won her her second Oscar and made her employable in Hollywood again.  Bergman would then have a remarkable third act in her career, making a series of films that were consistently successful opposite major leading men like Cary Grant (Indiscreet), Robert Donat (The Inn at the Sixth Happiness), Rex Harrison (The Yellow Rolls-Royce), and Walter Matthau (Cactus Flower).  Bergman, always beautiful & sexual, but more in a timeless way than an "of her moment" beauty was able to buck much of the problems that other actresses of her generation had in staying relevant & continuing to gain roles.  She won a third (ill-advised, but that's a conversation for a different day) Oscar for 1974's Murder on the Orient Express, and then made today's film, which would be her last theatrically-released movie, and one in her native tongue.

(Spoilers Ahead) Autumn Sonata is something of a chamber play where Eva (Ullmann) has invited her famous, concert pianist mother Charlotte (Bergman) to stay with she & her husband Viktor (Bjork).  Initially, we get the sense that Eva is a bit mousy, intimidated by her mother's beauty & success, and her mother's forceful nature keeps Eva from being too forthright with her.  We also learn that she is keeping a secret from her mother, that her disabled sister Helena (Nyman) is staying with them, which upsets Charlotte who does not like to witness her other daughter's handicap & difficult life.  As the movie progresses, though, we see a switching of the power dynamic in their relationship.  Eva becomes more forceful, challenging her mother on the years of neglect she endured growing up, with Charlotte's singleminded approach to her career (and her laissez-faire attitude toward her marriage to Eva's father), as well as later hardships such as Charlotte's insistence that Eva get an abortion when she was 18, the death of Eva & Viktor's son who died years earlier (without any consoling from Charlotte), Eva's loveless marriage, and allegations that Charlotte's recently-deceased boyfriend had molested Helena.  The movie takes a look at these two women as broken, not able to find any sort of absolution within each other, even if the other one appears to be the root cause of much of their anguish.  The film ends on an ambiguous note, with Charlotte leaving for another concert, and Eva, potentially contemplating suicide but likely not going through with it, once again reaching out to her mother, understanding that their relationship might not be over yet.

Ingmar Bergman is my favorite film director, and this is one of his better-known films that I'd never seen.  A lot of the signatures are there, including some that others dismiss about the director's work (his preoccupation with anguish, family, & (in particular) death), as well as the the things that I love about his work.  Bergman is fascinated by closeups, and finding a way to frame the camera on an actor's face, waiting for nothing more than time to give away more secrets of their feelings.  With Bergman & Ullmann, he gets that.  There are scenes where he looks at Bergman, every inch the movie star, and waits as emotion or exasperation in Charlotte's eyes start to fall forward, a woman who has given so much pretense, so much performance, she doesn't entirely know how to play the next moment if she's just expected to be herself, not read what's on the page.  Bergman understands this about Charlotte, and both she and Ullmann give master class performances as a mother/daughter who are anguished by the past, but cannot move past it in order to find a future.  I'm going with a 4-star, mostly because I don't use halves on TMROJ (this would be a 4.5 on Letterboxd), principally because I thought the framing device with Viktor didn't work, but the acting is all extraordinary-it's a pity that this wasn't Bergman's late third-act Oscar and not Orient Express, and it is the best work she was ever nominated for.

Bergman was battling the breast cancer that would eventually kill her while she was filming Autumn Sonata.  Despite this, this wasn't her last film (though it was the final one to be released theatrically).  She would star in A Woman Called Golda in 1982, winning a posthumous Emmy before her death at 67.  She would also make a number of public appearances, including giving Alfred Hitchcock his AFI Life Achievement Award.  Bergman was an actress who starred in multiple Hitchcock movies, and nearly had a marriage destroy her Hollywood career, before returning triumphant.  Tomorrow, we'll kick off a new star and month with a different actress who became Hitchcock's muse, one who did escape his shadow, but only through a marriage that would end her Hollywood career.