Wednesday, December 1, 2021

TCM Star of the Month December 2021: Ingrid Bergman

Humphrey Bogart (l.) and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (Dec. 1, 10:00 PM)

We've reached the start of another month, and that means that it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time around, that star is Ingrid Bergman. As with Sydney Greenstreet in November, Bergman's films will be airing every Wednesday in prime time, starting with her first Oscar-winning role in Gaslight at 8:00 PM. Even though Gaslight won her the Oscar, she's probably better remembered for Casablanca, which follows at 10:00 PM.

This first week of the month sees the Bergman movies continue well into Thursday, mostly because TCM got the rights to air all of the movies that are part of the Criterion Collection's Eclipse series box set of movies Bergman made early in her career in her native Sweden before coming to Hollywood to make Intermezzo: A Love Story opposite Leslie Howard. The original Swedish Intermezzo will be on at 12:45 PM Thursday, but the Hollywood version isn't part of the salute. The picture at the left is from Bergman's first film, The Count of the Old Town at 8:00 AM Thursday. There's also one Swedish movie not part of the Eclipse set, Swedenhielms at 9:30 AM, which I haven't seen before. I would have watched another of the movies off the Eclipse set that I haven't blogged about before, but I've already got a couple of movies airing early Friday to blog about, so one is the subject for a post this afternoon and the other gets a post on Thursday.

Among the other Bergman photos I've used on the blog before includes a screenshot from Cactus Flower, which will air at 12:15 AM on Dec. 30 (so still late Wednesday evening Dec. 29 in more westerly time zones) as the final night of the Bergman tribute includes a bunch of her later movies. This also includes Bergman's final film, Autumn Sonata, concluding the entire tribute at 6:15 AM on Dec. 30. In the below photo, you can see Bergman at right along with Liv Ullmann, who plays Bergman's daughter.

There are some surprise omissions from the Bergman salute, including her pictures with Alfred Hitchcock. Under Capricorn isn't a big surprise, considering how rarely it shows up and was nominally independently produced. But the absences of Spellbound and Notorious are much more surprising. And, as I mentioned above, the Hollywood Intermezzo is also absent, which is also somewhat less surprising since it's a Selznick International picture and hasn't shown up on TCM in a decade or so.

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