The Diasporic Cinemas of Ingrid Bergman

This chapter examines the notion of Nordic otherness in the film work of Ingrid Bergman. Otherness here refers to the construction of Bergman as an outsider in films in Hollywood, Italy and, at the end of her career, back in Swedish cinema again. This difference can be understood as one that seemed both strange yet compelling, and is part of a long history of Hollywood casting Europeans as compelling others. From her works in Hollywood (1939–49) to her Italian period with Roberto Rossellini (1950–6), to her last film and her return to Swedish film in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, Sweden/West Germany, 1978), the present study characterizes Bergman’s body of work through interlinked themes: the role as a Swedish/European other; the working woman (i.e. a woman in the workforce), both in terms of the promotion of her career and many of the roles themselves that are subject to forms of constraint (from marriage to martyrdom). The chapter traces her transnational career and reclaims Bergman as an actress with a great deal of agency over her career.