Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (2006)

Some time ago I was watching The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and I (again) noticed what a great actress Ingrid Bergman was. It immediately reminded me that I still had a biography about her, which was written by Charlotte Chandler. She is no stranger to the movie star biography world as she has written books on Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis, Mae West, Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder and so on. 

It is the first time however that I have read something she has written, but I am pleasantly surprised. Especially since she has had a number of conversations with Bergman herself and is therefore able to tell many things first-hand. In addition, she apparently applied the same tactic to all her biographies, which allows her to fall back on overlapping themes. When Chandler was writing a book about (and with) George Cukor, she talked to him about Gaslight (a 1944 film directed by Cukor starring Bergman), but she also had talks with Federico Fellini. Bergman had a good relationship with the Italian director, since her second husband Roberto Rossellini has been Fellini's mentor. 

What follows is a biography that follows the familiar path of birth, youth, great success and death. The thing is, Bergman's life is fascinating in all these aspects. How she went to Hollywood as a Swedish woman and afterward almost (unconsciously) burned all the bridges in Tinsel Town by going to Italy with Rosselini and making films there. After that marriage failed, she came back to Hollywood. She did not have an easy life with no fewer than 3 marriages and numerous children, but she does not sound bitter anywhere. She just seems like a very amiable woman. It is especially nice that this has not become a one-sided image. The good aspects of Bergman are emphasized, but the bad aspects or mistakes she made are not concealed or put aside.

It is however a shame that this contains so few pages. With a career like Bergman's, you can really create a much thicker book, even without giving a full summary of every movie she's ever made. That's something that just irks me the wrong way, but even then: I'm going to try to check out some other books written by Charlotte Chandler.

Writer: Charlotte Chandler
Subject: Ingrid Bergman
Number of pages: 341
Published by: Simon & Schuster


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