Ingrid Bergman in Sweden

In the 1930s, Ingrid Bergman was a rising new star in Sweden and Intermezzo, released when she was just twenty-one, gave the actress her most famous role of this period.

Bergman plays Anita Hoffman, an aspiring classical pianist who falls in love with a famed, but married, concert violinist. Their passionate affair has deep and unanticipated consequences for them both, and for Anita, the affair also stirs a crisis of conscience.

Intermezzo was Sweden’s most celebrated film of the 1930s and it brought Bergman to the attention of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. Indeed, after Selznick saw the film, he ordered his representative “to take the next boat to Sweden and not come home without a contract with Miss Bergman.” Three years later, she would remake the film for him in her American debut and its great success would set her on the path to become a Hollywood legend.

Available as part of box set only

In one of the most challenging roles of her early career in Sweden, Ingrid Bergman plays Anna Holm, whose bitterness over her facial disfigurement leads her to become a blackmailer. However, when one of her victims turns out to be married to a renowned plastic surgeon, Anna is given the opportunity to change her life.

Directed by Gustaf Molander (Intermezzo), Sweden’s premier director of the 1930s and Bergman’s mentor, A Woman’s Face is a daring and frequently shocking psychological drama. It also contains a climactic, fast-paced chase across the ice involving a runaway sleigh, which the New York Times dubbed “wildly beautiful” in its original review.

Just three years later, A Woman’s Face would be remade by Hollywood as a vehicle for Joan Crawford. But now the original version can be seen as both a key early performance by Ingrid Bergman and as a significant rediscovery of Swedish cinema.

Only available in Box Set

In her last Swedish film before moving to Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman shines playing a small-town woman at the center of a sensational crime.

When Kerstin Norback (Bergman) is shot and gravely wounded by her lover, the trial causes a public scandal, forcing her to move to Stockholm under an assumed name. There she befriends a group of women and attempts to rebuild her life, free of public scrutiny. But the fear of her true identity being discovered follows Kerstin at every turn, and reaches a critical point when her ex-lover appears.

June Night is remarkably prescient in its view of a tabloid press and its insatiable need for scandal. As for Bergman, the role provided her with an opportunity to give a bravura performance, and she was praised by Swedish critics, including one who declared that she “establishes herself as an actress belonging to the world elite.”