Celebrities are, by their nature, enigmatic. They smile for the camera, but everyone knows it’s another performance. Consequently, the celebrity “tell-all” or “true story” becomes a source of endless fascination. Most of the time, since these narratives depend on second or third party testimonies, they end up adding to the mythology they’re attempting to critique. Two recent documentaries have pulled back the curtain on Hollywood royalty in new and distinctly personal ways. The first is Listen To Me Marlon, a bewitching portrait of Marlon Brando narrated by the actor’s self-recorded audio tapes. The second is Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, a nearly two-hour nosedive into Bergman’s life, as told by Bergman herself, that is, through readings from her personal diary.
The film opens on an entry from 1928. Then 13 year-old Ingrid Bergman (voiced by Alicia Vikander) reads from her dagbok, or diary. “My God…I beg you. Make Dad well. Don’t abandon us.” Bergman’s prayers go unheard, and by the end of 1929, her dad is dead and so are her friend, her grandfather, her uncle, her aunt and a cousin. Suddenly, the future star’s success is thrown into new light. “All I wish for now is a happier New Year. What will the new year bring?” It is incredible to hear such questions read aloud. She sounds like any little girl: naïve and sad and curious, all at once.
When Bergman is 16, she is cast as an extra on a film set and writes, “It felt like walking on holy ground.” She loves the freedom of being in front of the camera, and she hopes, with all her soul, to be an actress someday. A grainy black and white photograph shows her standing in the back of a crowd, and the sight is almost eerie. There is a light in her eyes. Indeed, she seems to contain the glow of the icon she would soon become.
Bergman is madly in love with her husband, but she also desperately wants to leave Sweden, to travel and above all, to work. She is a woman with a passion, and In Her Own Words proves the resiliency of Bergman’s drive to succeed. When she flies to London in 1939, only a few people know she was leaving. From London, she sails to Hollywood, where a five-year contract with United Artists awaits her signature.
In Hollywood, she meets David O. Selznick, attends a soiree with Clark Gable and gets cast as the love interest in Victor Fleming’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Her life changes overnight as she skyrockets to fame with films like Casablanca and Gaslight, for which she won the 1944 Oscar for Best Actress. Director Stig Björkman includes clips of Bergman’s films and the written accounts of her experiences on set (Hitchcock “brings out the best in men;” Cary Grant is “one of the nicest co-stars I’ve ever worked with.”), but film history is second to Bergman’s life.
Bergman practically lives at the studio. She works 14-hour days and goes six months without seeing her daughter. With tremendous sensitivity, Björkman shows how her career often came at the expense of time spent with her children. As Bergman states, “One can’t have everything.” Her negligence as a wife and parent is frankly depicted, and it’s the film’s only dark spot in an otherwise sterling portrait. Whether or not she’s a “bad” mother and whether that even matters remains up to audiences to decide.
Some of the footage was filmed my Bergman herself, and much of In Her Own Words plays out like an ode to film itself. The actress is pictured with a handheld camera, and, as she states in voice-over, “I love to film.” Bergman’s steadfast documentation of her life, through objects, diary entries and homemade films, is a form of record keeping that any documentarian must appreciate.
“Looking back on my life, who will I see?” With questions like these, In Her Own Words offers a candid and deeply touching portrait of a veritable star. Seeing partially through her eyes and also those of colleagues, friends and family members, from Isabella Rossellini to Liv Ullmann, In Her Own Words delivers Bergman like she’s never been seen before.