Tribute August 29, 2025 Ingrid Bergman - In Her Own Words
By Moira Sullivan
This report was part of the September 6 broadcast of Annakarinaland. Ingrid Bergman's birthday is August 29 and this year she would have been 110.
The year 2015 was the centennial celebration of the birth of Ingrid Bergman in Sweden. The festival poster for the 68th Cannes Film Festival featured a picture of her in part because of the world premiere of Swedish filmmaker Stig Björkman's documentary, Jag är Ingrid" (Ingrid Bergman - In Her Own Words, Sweden 2015.)
"Ingrid Bergman -In Her Own Words" highlights the work of a woman who dedicated her life to film. Though she was a phenomenal artist, so little is out there about her life on film. Stig Björkman co-wrote the documentary with Dominika Daubenbüchel and producer Stina Gardell. Swedish vocalist Eva Dahlgren, who also sings the final ballad of the film, coordinated the Super 8 footage, and Ingrid's letters to her friends are read by actress Alicia Vikander. The film came about through Björkman's friendship with Ingrid's daughter, Isabella Rossellini, who suggested that he make a film about her mother. Most of the film is found footage from newsreels but also footage of the home movies that Ingrid and her family made during her years in Hollywood, Italy, Sweden, and London.
The editing of this footage is brilliant. Above all, it shows that the ultra-professional Ingrid Bergman gave the greatest emphasis to her children, who were apart from her during her busy acting schedule. We see Ingrid with a film camera on many occasions during the film. Her father was a photographer with an eye for the composition of the frame and selected costume and makeup for his portraits of Ingrid, who is often in character. Ingrid lost her parents when she was very young. As far as men behind the camera, she fell in love with photographer Robert Capra and later in life married filmmaker Roberto Rossellini. She wrote to him and asked if he needed an actress who spoke English and a little French. That letter of invitation resulted in several years of marriage and the birth of three children, all of whom are part of the film.
Pia Lindström, her daughter by her first marriage to Petter Lindström, is also in the film. Ingrid defied the conventions of Hollywood and never regretted the things that she did, she said, but "what she hadn’t done." As she got older, her choices for roles diminished, but she still kept working. By her side throughout her career were several strong women, including Irene Selznick, the wife of David O. Selznick, but in her letters to them, it was always about her children.
This extraordinary documentary makes you not only esteem Ingrid Bergman but also her children Pia (Lindström), Roberto, Ingrid, and Isabella. All of them have her incredible charm and intelligence. In many ways Ingrid never lost her Swedish roots, and when working in the garden, raking leaves, and pushing a wheelbarrow, the tall Ingrid Bergman remained down to earth. She worked with great directors, but although she could not control what was said about her abroad and in Sweden, in her own life she made her own images.
Movie Magazine International
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