A black-and-white filmed version of the Ibsen's play, abridged, I gather, in which five characters are on and off the screen chatting with one another -- manipulating, cajoling, reassuring, threatening, hinting, spilling the beans. It's like no such social gathering as I've ever attended. My most painful experience was a dinner at which the half dozen guests had drinks (just one) in the sitting room, then moved to the dining room, then after dinner to the living room, shooed along like a herd of plodding cows, and the most intimate subject discussed was whether it was more efficient to kill a fly indoors with an insect spray or a fly swatter. I learned that some of those so-called sprays actually emit a single stream of poison. One of the guests swooned at the revelation and had to be revived with a sip of Poland Springs water.
Let's see. Ingrid Bergman is Hedda Tesman, née Gabler, who has just returned from a month's honeymoon with her husband Michael Redgrave, a scholar of Medieval history and a well-meaning dolt if there ever was one. He carries on about the beauty of the house while she immediately complains about the sloppy habits of the maid. When Redgrave says he doesn't know what to do with all the empty rooms, his aunt coyly tells him they will hopefully have tiny occupants soon enough. "Oh, yes, my books, you mean." (That's how impenetrable he is.) Bergman is revolted at the thought of children. You can tell she's got problems right off the bat. And in case you can't tell from the dialog, Ingrid Bergman lets you know through her performance. Her milquetoast husband gives her a hug and over his shoulder her smile turns to a grim frown. It must have been some honeymoon.
Not her first sexual encounter though, to judge from her conversation later with the recovering drunk and rival for Redgrave's teaching appointment. That's Tevor Howard, who has a rakish mustache and an artistic flop of hair, and who knows a lot about alcohol himself. Howard is having an adulterous affair with an old school friend of Bergman's. He and Bergman have a private conversation about their having once been lovers. She left him.
Then there is another character, Ralph Richardson, a flirtatious old rogue, a judge who visits from time to time, all smiles and insinuations. I kind of like him the best. Except for the absence of epigrams, he could be a character out of Oscar Wilde. Ralph He's a blackmailing scalawag but he's quite open about his perverse desires to visit Bergman when her husband isn't around -- or maybe when her husband IS around, for all we know. He looks capable of a threesome to me. He claims he'd like to be Bergman's "pet rooster" but she senses that he'd rather be "cock of the walk."
In checking out some of these period stories -- real or fictional -- it helps to keep in mind the position of women at the time in middle-class society. They weren't supposed to get anywhere except through their husbands. Jane Austen locked herself away and wouldn't let anyone catch her writing. The two ladies behind Miss Morrison's Ghosts had to publish under a pseudonym. Mary Todd Lincoln couldn't dream of becoming president of the United States but she could dream of Honest Abe doing so. There were few stepping stones for nice ladies in the 19th century. Maybe they could be a governess, as in Anna and the King of Siam, or The Turn of the Screw, but few other careers were open to them.
Not that Hedda Gabler should be taken as an early example of women's struggle for freedom from male domination. She turns out to be a mean bitch to just about everyone, whether it helps her husband's career or not. She wants to "shape destiny" but she's also frankly nuts, shooting off guns at guests and so forth.
Worse, when a drunken Howard drops the only manuscript of his beloved new, ground-breaking book, his "only child," she finds it and throws it in the fireplace, then gives him the pistol to kill himself with, so he can die a "beautiful death." That's not women's lib. That's impertinence.
Richardson doesn't get what he wants but then neither does Bergman, except in a most twisted way, depending on your definition of "beauty."
Let's see. Ingrid Bergman is Hedda Tesman, née Gabler, who has just returned from a month's honeymoon with her husband Michael Redgrave, a scholar of Medieval history and a well-meaning dolt if there ever was one. He carries on about the beauty of the house while she immediately complains about the sloppy habits of the maid. When Redgrave says he doesn't know what to do with all the empty rooms, his aunt coyly tells him they will hopefully have tiny occupants soon enough. "Oh, yes, my books, you mean." (That's how impenetrable he is.) Bergman is revolted at the thought of children. You can tell she's got problems right off the bat. And in case you can't tell from the dialog, Ingrid Bergman lets you know through her performance. Her milquetoast husband gives her a hug and over his shoulder her smile turns to a grim frown. It must have been some honeymoon.
Not her first sexual encounter though, to judge from her conversation later with the recovering drunk and rival for Redgrave's teaching appointment. That's Tevor Howard, who has a rakish mustache and an artistic flop of hair, and who knows a lot about alcohol himself. Howard is having an adulterous affair with an old school friend of Bergman's. He and Bergman have a private conversation about their having once been lovers. She left him.
Then there is another character, Ralph Richardson, a flirtatious old rogue, a judge who visits from time to time, all smiles and insinuations. I kind of like him the best. Except for the absence of epigrams, he could be a character out of Oscar Wilde. Ralph He's a blackmailing scalawag but he's quite open about his perverse desires to visit Bergman when her husband isn't around -- or maybe when her husband IS around, for all we know. He looks capable of a threesome to me. He claims he'd like to be Bergman's "pet rooster" but she senses that he'd rather be "cock of the walk."
In checking out some of these period stories -- real or fictional -- it helps to keep in mind the position of women at the time in middle-class society. They weren't supposed to get anywhere except through their husbands. Jane Austen locked herself away and wouldn't let anyone catch her writing. The two ladies behind Miss Morrison's Ghosts had to publish under a pseudonym. Mary Todd Lincoln couldn't dream of becoming president of the United States but she could dream of Honest Abe doing so. There were few stepping stones for nice ladies in the 19th century. Maybe they could be a governess, as in Anna and the King of Siam, or The Turn of the Screw, but few other careers were open to them.
Not that Hedda Gabler should be taken as an early example of women's struggle for freedom from male domination. She turns out to be a mean bitch to just about everyone, whether it helps her husband's career or not. She wants to "shape destiny" but she's also frankly nuts, shooting off guns at guests and so forth.
Worse, when a drunken Howard drops the only manuscript of his beloved new, ground-breaking book, his "only child," she finds it and throws it in the fireplace, then gives him the pistol to kill himself with, so he can die a "beautiful death." That's not women's lib. That's impertinence.
Richardson doesn't get what he wants but then neither does Bergman, except in a most twisted way, depending on your definition of "beauty."
