Brought to Hollywood to remake 1936’s Intermezzo, one of her early films in Sweden, Ingrid Bergman has an uncharacteristic eagerness onscreen in Intermezzo: A Love Story, once again playing a piano prodigy who falls in love with a famous, married violinist (Leslie Howard). “You are going after it as if it was the climax of a tremendous symphony,” her character, Anita, is told about her playing at one point, a line that could also describe Bergman’s performance. So beautifully subdued in the original film, here she’s pressing a bit, as if she’s trying to prove herself. This, as well as a truncated running time that rushes the central relationship, makes Love Story inferior to the ’36 version, but it still has its pleasures. Bergman and Howard are electric, under Gregory Ratoff’s direction, in an early scene at a dinner party where she accompanies his playing. Artistic—as well as other—sparks fly. (It might as well be a sex scene.) In addition, cinematographer Gregg Toland, who would work on Citizen Kane a few years after this, creates a duplicitous world of deep shadows. There is a shot of Anita backing away from a shop window, her reflection fading into the blackness of the night, that’s an all-timer.
(4/30/2023)
