Intermezzo: A Love Story
Directed by Gregory Ratoff
Written by George O’Neill, Gösta Stevens and Gustaf Molander
1939/USA
Selznick International Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Anita Hoffman: I have been an intermezzo in his life.[/box]
This little melodrama of adulterous love introduced the utterly radiant Ingrid Bergman to America.
Violin virtuoso Holger (Leslie Howard) comes home to his loving family after a world tour culminating in the retirement of his accompanist. He soon meets brilliant and beautiful young pianist Anita (Ingrid Bergman) who is giving his eight-year-old daughter lessons. Holger is captivated first by Anita’s playing and then by her person and they fall in love. Anita is plagued with moral scruples but cannot resist the attraction.
Well, one can immediately see why Bergman became a great big star! She is fabulous. The movie is ok but why oh why do they always have to toss a child under a car to bring a man to his senses?
Clip – first encounter
Ingrid is forever radiant!
Even as a middle-aged woman she glowed.
Radiant is the perfect word…………she was so beautiful, yet natural. This certainly isn’t one of her great films but it will pass muster. But it introduced us to her here in the US…..that’s the joy of it.
If Vivien Leigh is my pick for most beautiful woman of the 30’s, Ingrid Bergman is my pick for most beautiful woman of the 40’s.