Intermezzo (1936)

TCM's star in Summer Under the Stars for Sunday (August 29) is Ingrid Bergman. Thanks to TCM's close cooperation with Criterion, they're able to show a couple of Bergman's early Swedish movies that coincidentally happen to be on this Eclipse Series set. The first of them is the 1936 version of Intermezzo, kicking the day off at 6:00 AM.

Professor Holger Brandt (Gösta Ekman) is a popular concert violinist. Indeed, as the movie opens he's just finishing yet another world tour together with his promoter Charles (Bullen Berglund) and his piano accompanist Thomas (Hugo Björne). Thomas is, however, getting up there in years and decided that he's tired of the constant travel, so he's not going to be the accompanist on Holger's next tour.

Also tired of the constant travel is Holger's wife Margit (Inga Tidblad). Not that she's been traveling with Holder; instead she's stuck at home with the couple's two children, high-school-aged Åke (Hans Ekman) and young daughter Ann-Marie (Britt Hagman). She'd like to see more of Holger, who for his part seems to have a sense of wanderlust and even when he's at home can't really stay at home, wanting to spend his nights out at the opera instead of with the family.

Also at the house is Anita Hoffman (Ingrid Bergman). She's a very promising piano student, indeed up for a prominent scholarship that would enable her to study at the conservatory in Paris. But to help pay the bills, she's giving piano lessons to people like Ann-Marie. She even takes over from Ann-Marie when the daughter is going to accompany Dad when they're providing the musical interlude for Ann-Marie's birthday party.

Even if you haven't seen the English-language remake, it's not very difficult to guess what's going to happen next. Anita, being a music student like Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon, attends concerts, and runs into Holger after one of those evening concerts. Holger's gone alone since his family is comfortable staying at home, and as Holger and Anita talk after the concert, they begin to fall in love. Holger and Anita then start meeting in all sorts of dark, out-of-the-way places so that they won't be discovered by anybody.

Holger has yet another concert tour coming up; indeed, the possibility of another concert tour is already being discussed at the beginning of the movie. Holger needs that new accompanist, and he's falling in love with Anita, so why not invite her to be the accompanist? It's not as if she could possibly upstage him, and since they're in love they'll get to spend time together.

There's still that minor issue of Holger's marriage; eventually, during a break in the tour that Holger and Anita are spending in Switzerland, Charles comes with divorce papers from Margit. But there's also that scholarship Anita had applied for; she gets a letter from Thomas that she's won the scholarship, which would require her to leave Holger to go to Paris.

Intermezzo is an extremely well-made movie, and it's easy to see watching this why producer David O. Selznick would have wanted to bring Bergman over to Hollywood when he himself saw the movie on its American release. She's unsurprisingly quite good, but so is Ekman. The story is good, and like a lot pre-New Wave foreign movies, not that far away from Hollywood so easier for people who aren't necessarily that excited about having to read subtitles to get into -- even though Selznick chose an English-language remake of this to be Bergman's first Hollywood film.

Definitely watch this version of Intermezzo if you get the chance.