INGRID
It started out, I thought, as a harmless little gesture of friendship. One artist reaching out to another, and then wound up becoming this big…thing, taking all of our lives along with it. A huge international scandal. The front page of every newspaper in the world. Being branded as a pariah in the U.S., denounced on the Senate floor. Everything. When I first saw the movies, I was very impressed. Being a child of the Hollywood system—we won’t even talk about my years in Sweden—I was used to films being shot in suffocating studio environments. You wake up at an ungodly hour in the morning, they strap you into a chair in hair and makeup for a few hours and pour gallons of coffee down your throat, hoping you’ll be sufficiently awake by the time the first shot is scheduled. Then begins a day of doing everything the same way, a million times over, until everything is perfect—the lights, the camera movements, the sound, the way you tilt your head, the way you put a glass down on the table, and especially your hairdo and your makeup. The acting, the theory was, would take care of itself. That’s what the actors do. In between every take, five people fly in to recomb your hair and make sure that no wisps got away, destroying your perfect hairdo. You get powdered down again because even though you’re a star, it’s impossible not to sweat under those massive lights. Your lips get re-done, your dress gets patted down just in case there were some unsightly wrinkles produced, unlike in real life, when you sat down in the last take. This goes on for ten or twelve hours a day. By the end of the day, if you’re lucky, you will have shot two or two and a half minutes of useable footage. That’s for a feature that’s about two hours long. So, these movies, Open City and Paisan, seemed very fresh when I saw them. The camera was out in the streets. We never went out into the streets. Too many things could go wrong. We would build outdoor streets on the backlot, if we absolutely needed them. But go to a real location? Never! And they seemed to be made very quickly, too. As if the police were after them. They had to hurry up and get the shot and then rush off to the next location. Which, to some extent was true. You were shooting in a wartime situation and you never knew what was going to or could happen next. And then the images themselves. Every shot didn’t look like it had to be a masterpiece of lighting and composition or else the whole crew would have to commit hara-kiri. It just looked like what it was—a movie that was shot on the run. It looked like it might be fun to work like that for a change. And, of course, there was that last film I did with Hitch that practically tipped me over the edge. Oh, yes, of course, film critics and aesthetes and their like would “ooh” and “aah” over it later—I think that’s what Hitch had in mind anyway—but I can’t tell you how nerve-wracking it was, doing a seven- or an eight-minute take with the camera pulling away from you as you try to keep up with it, and the furniture and walls in front of you silently moving out of place to allow you and the camera to pass—-and, of course, you’re not supposed to notice that any of this is happening—and then they silently move back into place after you’ve passed them. All the while, of course, you have to hit your marks, remember your lines, look your beautiful best, and, oh, yes, act at the same time. Exhausting! I’m a thorough professional and I don’t complain very much because I love what I do. But this was too much. At one point, I broke down into tears. To Hitch, it was all a big joke. In his pronounced drawl, that became so familiar to television watchers in the 50s, he would say as if to comfort me, “But, Ingrid, it’s only a moooovie!” And, of course, the way he said it, you could never figure out if he was being ironic or not. Or if he was making fun of you. I love Hitch and we had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot during the making of the first two movies. But this—this was something else. I needed a change.
ANNA
You never know where the ideas for a movie come from. The movie audience just sits in the theater on their fat asses and think that it’s all happening on the spot, that the actors are making up their lines, and that’s it. Or maybe they think someone is just dying to tell this one story and that’s how the movie gets produced. Maybe I thought that too before I started acting in movies but I soon learned better. After we had worked together several times, Robbé wanted to do something different. You know how these ambitious directors are. They always want to top themselves. A cousin of his lived in Sicily and suggested he come visit. He took a trip to the Aeolian Islands and the idea was born. It was only a sketch of an idea really but he wanted to use those locations, those barren islands that looked as if an angry God had thrown some molten lava into the sea and they froze there, just like that—untouched and unchanged from the day they were made, till this very moment. Of course, I was interested in any idea he had, especially if it was going to be a movie with me in it. After all, Open City put my face on the map for once and for all.
INGRID
Maybe I was a little naïve—my fan letter to Roberto that started the whole thing. I was so enthusiastic, I offered him my services as an actress and said I didn’t know any Italian, except for two words—“Ti amo.” I suppose that was a little forward of me. Maybe it looked like I was throwing myself at him, I don’t know. Later, he said it arrived on his birthday. So, that was a very propitious sign. An Act of God. I don’t think I was ready to fall in love with him but obviously I was ready for something. Then he came to America to try to get money for Stromboli, even though he didn’t have a script and, if Hollywood liked anything, Hollywood liked scripts. At first I was taken aback. He was a nondescript, balding middle-aged man with a bit of a pot belly and he wore suits that didn’t fit. Not exactly my type, especially since I worked every day with movie stars who looked like gods. But as soon as he started talking… So many projects, so many ideas. This was all in French, mind you. Or with a translator present. We didn’t have any other language in common at that time. I was swept away. What a charming man! I was enthralled. I became as enthusiastic about his ideas as he was. You wanted to follow this man, just to find out what he would come up with next. He had this one idea, no script. Perfect for me, he said. I play a war refugee who marries an Italian because he will take her out of her refugee camp. They get married and move to the island he lives on. Stromboli! How romantic, I thought. But in a neo-realistic kind of way, of course.
ANNA
It was originally going happen, my big break in movies, a few years earlier. Luchino had written Ossessione just for me but when I became pregnant with my Luca, I had to step aside and let that no-talent cow, Clara Calamai, replace me. That faggot cunt Luchino even dared to suggest to me I have an abortion—just for the honor of playing in his fucking film! Fuck him! They originally wanted that cow for Open City but she wanted too much money and she then she played a little too hard to get. They gave me the part instead. That’s how life works out sometimes. Tough shit, Clara! She didn’t have much of a film career after Ossessione, a few small roles in other Visconti’s films, but not what I call a career, although to give the devil her due, she was a big star in the fascisti years. But just having bovine good looks is not enough. Even audiences get fed up with it if you can’t act. And once you’ve lost your looks, well, where are you then? Out on your ass. So, Robbé was going to do the island film with me. But before that, we were all set to do Air of Rome, a movie about Italian immigrants in New York. Then, he became an internationally famous director, famous beyond his wildest dreams. He was invited to Hollywood, he was nominated for an Oscar, and so on. Even though we Italians pretend those things are of no interest to us, when it happens, watch out! Everyone can be seduced by the glamorous life and the expectation of greater riches and especially more expensive projects. Even Robbé, poverino. And then he met that Swedish strumpet and everything changed. I had to read in the newspapers that he was going to do my film with her. That spineless coward couldn’t even call me and tell me himself. He couldn’t tell me he was sleeping with that bitch. When I showed him the stories in the papers, he pretended that gossip columnists made it up. It was just another movie, it was just another project, he wanted a change of pace, a different location, a different face, that was all. He would come back to me after the film was over. Over my dead body! I dumped a plate of spaghetti on his head in a very popular restaurant. Everyone was very amused. It was my secret-weapon which I used every now and then. Sometimes it was pasta, sometimes it was soup. Messy, but effective. Let that that bloodless blonde with ice-water in her veins keep him! I hope they’ll be happy together! May they both rot in hell!! By that time I had an idea of my own. Yes, let’s make the volcanic island movie but with me as the star. If they could have their island, I could have one of my own. If that bitch deserves a volcano, so do I!
INGRID
So, Roberto and I are driving around Italy. This before we started shooting. He tells me to wait for him at the trattoria till he gets back. He comes back a little later and tells me he’s just found two men—one of whom will be playing my husband and the other one will be playing the lighthouse keeper. He’s not even sure which will be which. Maybe they can toss a coin to decide. There are several ways to take this. Roberto acts strictly by instinct. His gut tells him what to do and he obeys. He will hire someone on the spot if he thinks they’re right for it. But on the hand, maybe it’s a little too casual. You’d think, if he chooses a man who’s going to play opposite that great star, Ingrid Bergman—that would be me—as her husband, he might spend a little more time searching for the right one. Or at least come up with several possibilities. Or at least try him out with the actress who is supposed to be playing his wife before making a decision. But to walk into a bar and say I’ve found the right guy is a little presumptuous, don’t you think? Doesn’t it suggest that Roberto isn’t quite all that serious? Or maybe he was trying to tell me something—it’s not that hard to be an actor. Don’t think you’re such a big shot. Anyone can do it. He even offered me, after the fact, the choice of deciding which one I wanted to play the husband or the lighthouse keeper, as if all actors are interchangeable. And mind you, neither of these men were actors in the first place. I should have known then how much contempt he has for actors but in a lot of ways, I’m a slow learner. I did realize, but much later.
ANNA
You know, you esthetes out there you sit on your fat twats and you think you know how movies get made but you don’t! You think someone comes up with a beautiful idea, and then writes a beautiful script and then makes a beautiful movie. Bullshit! It was never like that. You get ideas from stealing from other people. It’s the oldest game in the book. Even Shakespeare never came up with an original plot in his life. Steal, steal, steal. And then steal some more. And especially if it’s a friend’s idea! Or steal to get revenge! More movies than you know get made as grudge-fucks, films made as retorts to other films. Take John Huston’s piece of shit, would-be masterpiece, Moulin Rouge. A stodgy biography with José Ferrer walking around on his knees fooling no one but the Academy members. But Jean Renoir saw it and decided to make his own version, the real one, about Paris during the same period—at least it was something he knew a thing or two about personally—the wonderful French Can-Can. Maybe it would have happened anyway. But later, rather than sooner. Let’s put it this way—Huston threw down the gauntlet, Renoir picked it up. Another example, films talking to each other— Howard Hawks hated the laden-with-significance pretentiousness, of the widely praised High Noon. Hawks loathed the self-righteous, sanctimonious, boo-hoo-ness, woe-is-me, I’m the only-man-of-integrity-in-this-here-town tone of it all. So he made Rio Bravo. It happens all the time. And then, once in a while, suddenly everyone wants to make biographies of the same historical figure. Why is that? Maybe it’s in the air. Or in the drinking water. If he can make Stromboli, I can make Vulcano! The producer, Renzo, his cousin, is all for it.
INGRID
The way I work—I read the script. Then I read it again. I analyze the character. I make decisions so that the character’s responses in each scene are of whole cloth. This is what actors do. Roberto had no interest in actors, as I was soon to find out. He would write dialogue the morning of the shoot, or just before he shoots the scene, and hands it to me on little scraps of a paper. If I got a line wrong, it didn’t matter. He actually suggested that I could improvise, as long as I said sort of what he wanted me to say. I do not improvise. I am an actor. I have to believe and trust that the writer and the director know better than me what they want. After all, they spent much more time and energy thinking about it. Not so. At least, not with Roberto. He was more interested in the landscape and the situation. He liked places more than he liked people. He didn’t want, or even care about, characters. He was only interested in landscapes that people appear in. That’s why I’m always walking, walking, walking in his films. Sometimes I’m driving. He would spend hours walking around that godforsaken island trying to find the right location for the, I won’t even say “scene,” let me say, rather, “situation.” But he will spend no time at all talking to me about my character. That takes care of itself. I am Ingrid Bergman. My face and my fame fill in all the rest. Then he would take the locals from the island and give them lines. Them he would direct. But since everyone on that island was illiterate and no one had even seen a movie before, much less a light bulb, it was very hard to get what he wanted. They come off as stiff and awkward and when they do talk you get the feeling that they don’t even understand what they’re saying. That was fine with him. That was natural! That was realistic! Since they didn’t know anything about making movies, they also didn’t understand when they were supposed to say their lines. So, he has strings tied to their toes and the string gets yanked when they’re supposed to speak. So, that’s how realism works! I started giggling uncontrollably. It was my fault that the take was ruined. Since I barely understood the language and most certainly did not understand the dialect of the people on the island, and since everyone was winging it, I didn’t even know when it was the cue for me to say my line. Roberto explodes again. No wonder he wants to shoot on a volcanic island. He is that volcano. Why did I come along for this ride?
ANNA
Little does she know what she’s getting into! First of all, all he does is talk, talk, talk. It’s all this hi-falutin’ nonsense as if he’s Aristotle explaining everything to his dull-witted students and expecting them to take notes. And then publish them later. The man is crazy in love with the sound of his own voice. He just says whatever comes into his head and then spins elaborate verbal spider webs of words, words, and more words. He was born with the gift of gab. He can talk the balls off a brass monkey. All he wants to talk about are his projects, his this, his that. It may work when you’re talking to a producer and trying to shake some money out of him. But it’s not so much fun when you’re having dinner. Or in bed. Bed! That’s another thing. In fact, he wasn’t very good in bed. It wasn’t exactly a tiny, tiny dick but it wasn’t nearly as big as he thought it was. I think I know more about what cocks should be than he does. He preferred to cuddle. I have nothing against cuddling but I like the other stuff better. Even in bed, he likes talking best of all. You have to listen to his ideas for every project that pops into his head. Che noia! But you go with Robbé because he’s a genius. Most of what he says is a load of crap but some of it’s fun. And with Robbé, you never know what he’s going to do next. He never stops lying, but he does it with such sincerity and so insistently, you want to believe him. He’s incredibly jealous, of everything and everyone, and totally undependable. But he’s also kind and generous, especially if it’s not his money. He thrives on chaos and is a master at making sure it happens. He is the eye of a hurricane. He’s like, well, a fucking volcano! It’s exciting being with him. He’s like a goddamn tenor in a third-rate verismo opera. In fact, he’s like me. Except when I’m on stage. That’s where we differed. When I’m in a show, I deliver. I’m always on time and I shine. I take my art very seriously. I am above all an actress and a singer. And a mother, too, of course. All the rest is bullshit.
INGRID
I found out later, he pretended that he barely knew who I was, he hadn’t seen my films. Ingrid Bergman, who’s she? Oh, a world-famous movie star? Oh, OK. That was always Roberto’s way, creating his own mythology of himself, re-inventing himself every second. It made for very quotable quotes in the newspapers. He would say anything to anybody. And especially to Cahiers du Cinéma. He could talk for hours, for days even about what everything in his films meant or was supposed to mean, whether it was up there on the screen or not. He would tell anyone anything they wanted to hear. Basically, he made it all up as he went along. The French swallowed it whole, hook line and sinker. No questions asked
ANNA
It was hot and horrible on that shit hole island. No electricity, no phones, no social life. Fortunately, I had my dog with me but they wouldn’t let him be in the picture. The work was hard but William Dieterle, a Hollywood veteran, was a professional, unlike Robbé. We had a schedule and we stuck to it. So many and so many pages each day. And I liked the producers, especially Renzo, who wrote the original story idea for Robbé and me. He and some Sicilian pals of his—a bunch of aristocratic intellectuals, not that I hadn’t my fill of intellectuals with Robbé—wanted to show scenes of Sicilian life. He wanted to make a picture in that part of Italy which had never been filmed before. They made beautiful documentaries about Sicily and also invented a method of shooting underwater. Footage from their documentaries was incorporated into my film and that worked very well. As for the underwater footage, that’s probably why they wanted Rossano Brazzi hunting for the treasure at the bottom of the sea. That part of the movie is very cranked up melodrama and even though I love melodrama, maybe even more in my life than in my films, I thought that part of the movie—my having to sleep with that rat Rossano to prove to my sister that he was no good, didn’t make too much sense. But the first half of the movie, when I am forcibly moved to this island prison and treated badly by the villagers was very much in the spirit of the movie that Robbé originally wanted to make. Only this time by a pro! If it sounds like Stromboli, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Robbé stole Renzo’s idea to make his own version of it. If you compare the two films side by side you will see so many similarities it will make your teeth ache. That porco! And, of course, the scene of the tuna being slaughtered, the best scene in Stomboli, the only good scene if you ask me, was stolen from Renzo’s treatment. Before that, all Roberto knew about tuna was that tonnato vitello was on the menu in every restaurant in Italy.
INGRID
When I originally left Hollywood to make Stromboli, I had no idea that I was going to leave Petter. And certainly not Pia, my daughter. When I found out that I was pregnant, that was when it all started, the international uproar. Of course, we couldn’t tell anyone. But at some point, of course, it became evident. I was still married. Roberto was married. But not to each other. We had to get divorced from our spouses before the baby was born. But Petter made it very difficult, impossible really. It was bad enough to leave my husband but to have another man’s baby was unforgivable. I suggested an abortion but Roberto was horrified. He convinced me to keep the baby and I’m glad I did. Well, my having a baby, Robertino, out-of-wedlock became an international scandal. I was called the most horrible things in the world. The day I was positive I was pregnant, Stromboli erupted but the lava flow was on the other side of the mountain. I thought it was an amusing coincidence. Sometimes life is like that. Roberto thought it was sign from God. As if God doesn’t have other things on his mind! Italians! Really!
ANNA
Robbé liked the idea of making movies more than he liked making movies. He loved talking about what he wanted to make. This project, that project. When it was all as nebulous as ether, that was what excited him. Writing the script was boring because it meant that something was actually going to happen. You actually had to work. As for shooting, he didn’t care. Lights, no lights. The camera here or there, makes no difference. He was looking for the accident that reveals the truth. But how often can you rely on accidents to help you discover what should have been in the script in the first place? How many successful accidents do you need to compensate for a shitty script? He would leave the set for hours at a time, trying to figure out what to do next. Or he would take off for a few days while the crew sat around and waited for him. He was waiting for inspiration. Or he would have one of his headaches which would render him immobile for days at a time. To tell the truth, Robbé was the world’s most famous amateur. If I was an impossible diva he was an impossible divo. I don’t pretend that I’m easy to put up with. I never said I was an easy person. I’m not. I’m a monster. But so is he. We deserved each other, Robbé and I. But it was also exhausting. We’d incinerate ourselves if we stayed together too long. I don’t envy that Swedish meatball. She’s got her hands full. I give it two years. Tops. A little more if she has a baby.
INGRID
My husband has locked me in the house. I must get away. Someone— conveniently enough, the lighthouse keeper whom I’ve been making goo-goo eyes at, is just outside my house—helps me get out through the window. I will climb across the surface of the live volcano to the other side of the island. From there I will take a boat, away from this torture chamber. My character is overcome by sulphur fumes. The soles of her feet are burned by the heat of the volcano. I tumble down the side of the mountain, scraping my arms and legs. I am also pregnant. Not just the character but me, as well. But it is also I, Ingrid, wife of the director, who is crawling on the surface of the volcano, having my feet scorched, bruising my arms, overcome by the fumes. I, Ingrid, the actress, the person, the director’s wife, who is also pregnant by the director, just as the character I’m playing is pregnant, is forced to endure all of this for his art. Is this life imitating art, as some high-school smart-alec might say? Or is this unthinkable sadism? And I should tell you, one of the crew members actually died from smoke inhalation. He had a heart attack. Poor Lodovici. Nobody talks about him when they mention the movie, do they? Working for Roberto can be dangerous to your health. Especially if you’re his wife. Or Lodovico. Anyway, I am scrambling across the mountainside like a billy goat and, finally, exhausted, fall asleep. I wake up in the morning and call out to God. I have seen the light. I guess I am saved. Or something. It all has something or other to do with religion and Catholicism. I have no idea what. It’s all very mystical. I don’t understand any of this stuff. I guess I’m not supposed to. Religion has never played a big role in my life. The original title of the movie was supposed to be Terra di Dio. Maybe I should have paid a little more attention.
ANNA
He was also very kind and understanding, especially when you were in trouble. When my Luca got polio, Robbé was a prince. But the word “faithful” was not in his vocabulary. He always had a wife and mistresses stashed away somewhere, plus whoever else he could get his hands on. He lived a complicated life. He made his life very complicated and he liked it like that. When his son, Romano, died suddenly at the age of 9, he was inconsolable. I consoled him. We would spend hours in each others’ arms sobbing about our mutual misfortunes, comforting each other. It was very beautiful. Once the sobbing stopped, the quarreling began. That never stopped. If you must know, I think we both enjoyed it too much.
INGRID
And then there was the story of the priest. Remember the priest in the film? I go to him looking for some kind of answer and then I try to seduce him into getting me off that bloody island. I try to seduce all the men in the film. The lighthouse keeper, the priest. I even marry my husband in order to get out of the displaced persons camp. According to Roberto’s view of the world, I, a northern European, non-Catholic, would sleep with anyone anywhere to get what I wanted. Charming! You would think with all the amateurs Roberto enjoyed collecting, the priest too would be a non-actor. No, he was a professional actor and a friend of Roberto’s. In the early 50s he had a TV show of his own in America called The Continental. In it, in his soft, cooing Italian- accented voice, Renzo Cesana is an international playboy. He opens the door to his apartment to let the supposedly attractive female viewer who is never seen in. It is all done with a subjective camera. So, in that sense it was very original—almost Warholian before the fact. He keeps telling her, the viewer, the audience, the unseen woman, how attractive she is. He is constantly offering her cigarettes and champagne. He makes her feel desired and wanted. He is the perfect answer to lonely, single, unwanted women everywhere, especially if you believe that baloney that European men are more sophisticated than American men. The ideal viewer, I suppose, would be Miss Lonelyhearts in Rear Window—women of a certain age, who have not found the right man and are still hoping, even though they know it’s futile. By the way, you probably don’t know this but when I was having an affair with Robert Capa, the famous photojournalist, I talked about it with Hitch. Who else could I tell? Certainly not my husband, Petter. And Hitch was always interested in those kinds of stories. I knew it couldn’t work out because I was a movie star and he was always traveling to different dangerous locales. He covered wars, you know. There was very little common meeting ground and our schedules always kept us apart. Yes, we loved each other but we never got to see each other. Hitchcock used the incompatibility of the relationship in Rear Window. See? If you’re an artist, nothing gets wasted. What was I saying? Oh, yes, The Continental. Even then it was considered very silly eyewash. But to think this was played by the same man who offers me spiritual advice and spurns my advances was nothing short of hilarious. I never told this to Roberto. Being in the clutches of that Magnani harpy suggested that he actually did have a sense of humor. But certainly not about his own films. When it came to that, he was a very serious man indeed and could not bear to be crossed, mocked, or criticized. He always felt that no one really understood him or his films. He saw everything, even the slightest criticism, as an attempt to humiliate him. Poor Roberto! Life is very hard if you don’t have a sense of humor about yourself!
ANNA
OK, since you’re so damn curious, here’s the map. They’re on their island, I’m on my island. All women get banished to their respective islands as punishment. One did it for love, the other did it for revenge. Same difference.
INGRID
And it seemed to me that each one of our movies together got worse and worse. In each of the films I get punished and it’s always by my husband. If I gave it half a moment’s though at the time, I would say all of our films together were an autobiography of our marriage—as seen by Roberto. I am always punished for being an outsider, for not being Italian, for not being Catholic, for having married for the wrong reasons. In Stromboli, I am at my most beautiful. Maybe I’m more beautiful in Notorious, perhaps I’m not the person to ask. I have to be punished for being so beautiful. I even willingly slept with Nazis, that’s how rotten I am. In addition, I am a most annoying creature. I’m always whining, which is something I rarely do in my life but I do it a lot in Roberto’s films. There’s a moment when I am wandering around the island and I hear the sound of a baby crying. There is life on the island, after all! People actually give birth on this desolate rock? I run into a little boy. Even though I don’t speak Italian, I try to engage him in conversation. Finally, I explode, in English. “Say something! Say something, anything to me!” Is this the way a normal person would try to engage a child whose language she doesn’t even speak? We had a fight about that. I said, look, Roberto, children don’t open up by themselves. They have to be coaxed into it, they have to be wooed. No, that’s the way Roberto wanted it. That’s the way it is in the script that he wrote for the scene two minutes ago. It makes me look like an egotistical idiot. That’s only one example. The ladies come to my house. They, of course, don’t speak English. I don’t say “Buon giorno” but “Hello.” How stupid can this woman be? I suggested to Roberto that I say “Buon giorno.” After all I had been living in Italy for a few weeks by now. No, no, no! “I want you to say, ‘Hello,’ because you are a foreigner.”
ANNA
I think going to the furthest edge of the island in the direction of Stromboli, every night after shooting and screaming, at the top of my lungs, cursing at Roberto and his Scandinavian slut, worked wonders. The movie was way behind schedule and my spies from that other island assured me things were not going well at all. I shit on your mother’s grave! I piss on your father’s balls! Your mother sucks black cocks! I screamed till I was hoarse and then I realized I had to save my voice for tomorrow’s shoot. Oh Robbé, Robbé, why did you do this to me? Why? You son of a bitch! You might be surprised to learn that even though I am a loud-mouth and a very vulgar woman, I never ever once bad-mouthed that cunt, Robbé, and his Nordic whore to the press. Not a word. If, for no other reason, I deserve sainthood for that! Santa Magnani!
INGRID
You know, in Hollywood, it’s against the law to be in movies if you look like her. She looked as if she never slept. And the bags under her eyes so big and dark. Max Factor wouldn’t allow it. She would have had to play the salty, fun-loving neighbor. Like Eileen Heckart. Or the cynic always ready with the wisecrack like Thelma Ritter. But with a foreign accent. She could be comic relief but never more than that. Strictly supporting actress material. But, all that said, she was a great actress. And when she laughed, it was like a lion roaring. She throws her head back and bares all of her teeth. Absolutely terrifying! Of course, I was a little jealous later on when it turned out she was good friends with Tennessee and he wrote not one play but two plays just for her. No one had ever written any plays for me. Roberto, of course, wrote several films for me. But they were more like poison pen letters, punishment for crimes I hadn’t committed.
ANNA
Those Sicilian boys wanted to do another picture with me, also to be shot in Sicily. It was going to be based on Merimée’s La Carosse de Saint-Sacrément . They got Visconti to write a script which he would later direct. But they thought his script was too anti-clerical, as if there could possibly be such a thing! No more Visconti. But Visconti wanted very badly to work with me. So, he developed Bellissima for me, one of my very best roles, one of my favorite movies. Thank you, Luchino, you are a very great director even though you are a very nasty faggot. The Sicilian boys then offered the Merimée movie to Renoir, after Renoir’s success with The River, following his fallow Hollywood period. With me, of course, as the star. It was a very good period for me 1951 and 1952. Especially after Vulcano. I was in these great movies that people will talk about when we’re all dead while Roberto and that stupid Swedish bitch of his are making these boring, amateurish films that nobody wants to see. Except the French, of course! If you want to make a piece of inept stronza in which nothing happens, take it to France! They’ll call it existential! Or spiritual! They will hoist you on their shoulders and carry you through the streets!
INGRID
I’m not vain, not really. I look in the mirror and I see what? My face. It’s the same face I’ve seen every day of my life. So, to me it’s not so special. People tell me I’m very beautiful. Good. There are advantages to being beautiful. For instance, it’s much better than being ugly. I can also tell by the looks in men’s eyes when I walk into a room that they see something that pleases them. But I’m not vain. For instance, when I first went to Hollywood, I refused to let them pluck my eyebrows. I wouldn’t let them change my nose or my teeth. Or my name. They took me as I am, or, rather, was, and then told me I was beautiful. If it were not for me, do you think they would have let Sophia Loren or Audrey Hepburn keep their thick eyebrows? I doubt it. When they wanted my hair cropped for For Whom the Bells Toll, did I object? Of course not. And I can tell you David O. Selznick to whom I was under contract had to approve of every lock that was shorn off. He sat there like a hawk watching every snip of the scissors as if he had a PhD in Hair Styling. And when I had to cut my hair short for the movie Joan of Arc, did I mind? Anyway, it’s not a sacrifice to change your looks for a role. It’s part of the character. Despite the terrible reviews Stromboli received, almost everyone commented on how gorgeous I looked. I think that was too much for Roberto. He made sure that would never happen again. Even though he wanted me because I was gorgeous, he didn’t want other men to want me when I became his wife. Although it was very complicated, we finally did get married. So, in the next few movies we made together, I have the most unbecoming hairdos, ugly clothes, and basically I look very worried and upset all of the time. You would be too if you didn’t have a finished script to read and didn’t know what was going to happen next. I am always moping and crying. I look older than I am in these films—Europa ’51, Viaggio in Italia, and Fear. And even though I am supposed to be wealthy in all these films, I look like a dowdy hausfrau with clothes that were bought off the racks at cheap department stores. I guess those clothes were more realistic than nice clothes. I don’t know. Don’t ask me. I’m only an actress, not a great director.
ANNA
Vulcano was a terrible flop. Everyone hated it. I don’t think it’s so bad. But that’s just me. Like practically every other Italian film made after Open City, it was called a decadent, watered-down betrayal of neo-realism. What does that mean? Neo-realism was never a religion. It was just a publicist’s phrase describing a handful of films made in a specific moment in time.
INGRID
Each of the films I made with Roberto is a poison pen letter to me, the world famous actress he captured and then, as soon as he got her, lost interest in. I always play bourgeois, self-centered, insensitive women who must be educated and, inevitably, brought down. It was almost like type-casting. If you want a woman like that in your film, get Ingrid! In Stromboli, I have to learn how to be humble and submissive. I must learn to accept the ways of God. In other words, I have to go back to that horrendous village, bear my child, and learn to be an obedient wife and caring mother, even if it kills me. In Europa ’51, I am an egotistical, self-centered woman who is so horrible, her 12-year old son attempts suicide because she makes him so unhappy. I decide to change my life and help disadvantaged people. My husband decides I’m crazy and has me locked up in a mental institution. There, at least, I can’t upset anybody. Especially my husband. Divorce is not even a plausible option, even though we’re not Italian. In Viaggio in Italia, I am a discontented housewife with absolutely no personality traits of her own or any interests. All I am good at and all I know how to do is bicker. My husband and I go to Southern Italy where I learn about culture and eroticism, (mostly from museums—I avert my eyes from statues of naked men) both of us snap at each other endlessly but when we are temporarily separated by a religious procession, we fall into each other arms and vow to start over. Un miracolo! Only in Italy. How long do you think that will last? I’m not taking bets, I’m just curious. In Fear, I’m punished by my husband for having an extra curricular affair. I am being blackmailed and so fearful that my infidelity will be revealed, I am about to commit suicide. Meanwhile, it is my husband who has been blackmailing me all along, just to see if I will confess to him. That’s all he wants from me—that I come clean and acknowledge my sin to him. Rescued from near-suicide, I return, repentant, to my home and my children. There you have it, the wide range of roles Roberto offered me. Well, to be fair, the men in all of these films are just as awful as I am. All the men are interchangeable and I defy you to remember what any of them look like two seconds after you’ve seen the movies, except for maybe George Sanders. OK, so the men are dreadful, too. They all actively dislike the woman they married and want to punish her. They have no interest in her well-being or in her either sexually or as a person. And why should they? She is a nagging, complaining shrew. Judging from these films that I made with Roberto, you’d surmise that the married couple was most awful social unit imaginable, a straightjacket designed to squeeze the life out of both parties. From Roberto’s point of view, snapshots to the world of our married state. Well, I suppose you can make films about any subject you want. There’s no law against that. On the other hand, I’m the supposed to be the new and much-treasured bride. And the mother of his children. Also I am Ingrid Bergman. Or used to be. Without putting too fine a point on it, these movies only got made only because I agreed to appear in them, not because everyone was dying to see the next Roberto Rossellini film. My name was still valuable enough for producers to fork over a little bit of cash to get them made, although all of these films failed miserably all around the world. Of course, the French loved them, but isn’t that what they do? They see all these films as spiritual and moral journeys. You can always rely on the French. They rarely disappoint.
* * *
I was in Paris. I can’t remember what I was doing there but I am sitting on a sidewalk curb crying, blubbering to Jean Renoir that I wanted to be in a comedy. I wanted to laugh again. I wanted to make a movie that was not only fun to make but also fun to watch. Dear Jean! He wrote Elena et les Hommes for me, a delightful comedy in which I laugh a lot. I have beautiful hairdos and beautiful clothes. And for the first time in years I look younger than I am—40 at the time. I don’t look miserable and put upon all the time. Ah, me. It seems that I’m terribly vain and shallow after all! Roberto, even though he wanted to, couldn’t put up a fight to prevent me from being in Jean’s film because he idolized Jean. It wouldn’t look good. But I think Roberto also knew that our time was coming to an end. Don’t think there weren’t many offers in the years that I was with Roberto. There were but Roberto was terribly jealous and didn’t want me to work with anyone else. Jean practically had to ask his permission before Jean asked me. Fellini wanted to direct me. I think he was a little in love with me, too. But he was so intimidated by Roberto, having been his assistant for so many years and feeling that he owed Roberto so much that he never really prepared to fight very hard to get me. De Sica and so many others. And Visconti wanted me for Senso. Me and Brando. Now that would have been a movie for the history books. Greatest Star of the 40s with Greatest Actor of the 50s. But Roberto wouldn’t have it. Some people say that neo-realism started with Roberto’s Open City in1945. Others say that it started with Visconti’s Ossessione in 1943. Guess where Roberto stands on that one. Luchino was the competition. Luchino was an archrival. Luchino was the Anti-Christ. Look what he did to that Magnani woman when he put her in one of his films. He gave her one of the greatest roles an actress ever had. No, no, no. Roberto wasn’t going to stand for that. Luchino couldn’t take all of Roberto’s abused and discarded women and put them into great movies. Infidelity is one thing. That, at least can be forgiven. Starring in a rival’s movie, that can never be forgiven. It was not to be. No Senso for me.
* * *
A few more stories and then basta. It was 1955. Clearly our marriage was almost over. I got an offer to do the play Tea and Sympathy in Paris. Actually, I was offered both A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Tea and Sympathy. Since I was too old to play Maggie the Cat, the choice was clear. I had never done a play in French before and it was a challenge. It
had been a huge hit on Broadway with Deborah Kerr in the main role and directed by Elia Kazan. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest play in the world but the role was very good for me. I knew I could do it and what I could do with it. To placate Roberto, they offered him the chance to direct it. But he hated the play and forbade me to do it. He said it would be a tremendous flop and it would close in a week. It would end my career. I bit my tongue. Opening night. A huge success. A standing ovation for fifteen minutes. I don’t know who times these things but I’ll take their word for it. To me, it seemed like forever. From the stage where I am taking my bows, I look into the wings where Roberto was watching. He was beside himself with rage. He hopped into his Ferrari and sped back to Rome. The play ran for nine months. It was considered a very daring play for its time because even if it didn’t deal with homosexuality, it hinted at it. A sensitive young man in college is ridiculed by his fellow students because he’s not interested in sports, is interested in things only girls are supposed to be interested in—like poetry and music. The housemaster’s wife—me, of course—is very tender with him and finally offers herself to him to prove to himself that he really is a man. We women. Always sacrificing so that the men can discover their true selves. How dull of us. But the play was so subtle in skirting the issue, if you didn’t know what it was about, you wouldn’t know what it was about. Deborah Kerr said that, in a quiet moment in the play, one woman turned to her female companion in the third row and whispered, but loudly enough for the actress on stage to hear, “See, I told you he wasn’t a communist.” If you remember, and you probably don’t, that was the one, when they made the movie, with the tagline, “Years from now, when you talk about this, and you will, be kind…” as the woman is unbuttoning the top of her cardigan. The 50s! God save us! How did any of us survive them?
Then there was Anastasia. It will be a huge flop, Roberto predicted. He hated the script. But, of course, he would. It was so antithetical to everything was interested in. Actors acting. A well-made script. Dialogue. Sets. Costumes. A big budget. A shooting schedule! A real salary for me!! The day I was to sign the contract, he threatened to drive his red Ferrari—one of his many sports cars—into a tree and kill himself if I signed. Roberto always threatened suicide when he didn’t get his way. If he wasn’t going to drive his car into a tree, he was going to blow his brains out. So wearisome. Those Italians! I suppose that’s what you get from watching too much opera at an early age! I signed the contract. It was a great personal triumph for me. America welcomed me back once again. I got my second Oscar. I have beautiful hairdos and beautiful costumes. I am beautiful again. I know, I know. I’m superficial and middle-class at heart. As Roberto reminded me a thousand times.
* * *
I never thought about things like this before but I have to think about them now. Just talking about the films that Roberto made with me—aren’t they all, well, I don’t know what the word is—retrograde? The woman always should submit, to her husband, to God, to the way of the world. Everyone should be humble and learn to accept the way the world is. Especially wives. All of our films together are about submission, humiliation, acceptance of the status quo, learning to live with oppression. For women only. That is the way to true happiness. I’m not sure I believe that. I believe in art and I believe in love and you must do everything in your power to realize yourself because if you don’t, there are plenty of people in the world who would be all too glad to crush you underfoot. There, Roberto. I’ve said it. I wish I could have said it at the time but I didn’t know how to. Probably because I was still very much in love with you, the father of my three beautiful children—Robertino and the twins, Isabella and Isotta Ingrid.
ANNA
OK, time to premiere my volcano film, Vulcano. I was hoping we could beat them to the finish line. All of Rome turns out for the premiere. I am very nervous and I’m biting my nails. I shouldn’t do that. Then, in the middle of the screening, the projector lamp burns out. And there’s no replacement bulb available. Only in Italy!! You could blame it on the war but the war ended five years ago. Doesn’t matter. Everyone still blames everything on the war. Someone has to go out and find another bulb. Meanwhile, there’s a private screening of Stromboli, so some people are starting to leave. Renzo starts doing a tap dance—quite literally!—to amuse people while they’re waiting, to keep them in their seats. Someone even suggests that maybe I could sing a few songs, until the bulb arrives. Just a minute, please! I’m an artist, not a streetwalker! Then, to make everything perfect, someone announces that the Swede just calved the little Rossellini bastard! The theater emptied out like that! You’d think they announced the death of Mussolini. Or the Second Coming. Like no one’s ever given birth before! Fucking Robbé planned it this way! I’m sure of it! Bad luck, bad timing. They didn’t even get to see me killed by the volcano. But the volcano killed me anyway. Ah, the life of an artist, the movie business. It can make you bitter, if you’re not careful.
INGRID
When he asked for a divorce, after he came back from India with a couple of more illegitimate children, he wanted to get married again. As the conditions of the divorce, he demanded that I promise to never let our three children visit America and that I never remarry. Even when I laughed out loud, he didn’t know what I found so funny. My advice to you, girls, is never marry an Italian.
ANNA
Maybe revenge is not a very useful emotion. Or a good enough reason for making a movie. Be careful what you wish for, especially if it’s a volcano. They’re likely to erupt.
For their help in researching this piece, I’d like to thank Bernard Eisenschitz, Francesca Dal Lago, and Tag Gallagher for his invaluable book, The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini.
Mark Rappaport,
September 2013
