The Essential Films of Ingrid Bergman by Constantine Santas & James M. Wilson

Author:Constantine Santas & James M. Wilson [Santas, Constantine & Wilson, James M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2018-06-22T05:00:00+00:00

Wounded in battle, Joan (Bergman), undaunted, pulls the arrow out. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. / Photofest © RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.

Themes

Joan of Arc is one of the few films in which Bergman does not have a romantic interest.4 Many believed (including Fleming, who was in love with Bergman himself) that a movie without a love story, about a French girl who saved her country, would not have a box office appeal in the United States, despite the success of Maxwell Anderson’s play on Broadway.5 Bergman, therefore, carries the burden of the story on her shoulders, and though she is surrounded by scores of ecclesiastics, military men of rank, and courtiers, played by fine actors, she remains in the center of interest from the first shot to the last. Men around her generally revere her, even in the middle of a military camp, where crude soldiers swear and gamble in her presence. She speaks with authority when she tells them that they should behave as good Christians, stop blaspheming and whoring, confess, and take communion. The soldiers, impressed by the forceful words and piety of such a young woman, see her as a leader among them and pay attention to her. Joan soon has a large following in the military camp commanded by La Hire, played by a gruff Ward Bond, the sidekick of John Wayne in many westerns. He is her staunch ally who slowly forms a regular army to march against Orleans.

Bergman looks comfortable as Joan, the heroine she had played on the stage in New York for six months. Her Joan in the movie is a military genius who knows where and when to strike and also understands what personal valor, spurred by faith, can achieve. She does not like the killing of battle that will be certain to follow, so she begs the English commander, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, at the fortress to surrender. When he peremptorily turns her down, she charges, leading the troops scaling the fortress and fighting along with the other soldiers. The leggy Bergman, covered with metal from head to foot, as tall as or taller than most men around her, resembles an androgynous visitor from another planet. She, like the historical Joan, wears men’s clothing at the camp full of men to protect her from molestation, and in battle she wears armor granted to her by King Charles. Bergman, who had honed her skills as Joan under the stage lights, had no problem projecting a soulful and brave Joan revered by friends and admired by some of her enemies.

In her autobiography, Bergman relates an incident when she had a meeting with George Bernard Shaw, whose play Saint Joan premiered in London in 1923, three years after Joan’s canonization in 1920. In the summer of 1948, Bergman was in London, preparing to film Under Capricorn with Hitchcock, when Gabriel Pascal, a Hungarian director who lived in England for many years (he produced Shaw’s well-known play Pygmalion in 1939), asked her if she wanted to meet the famous playwright, and she said yes.

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