Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words | Stig Björkman | NYFF 2015We live in an age where we are documenting everything we do. From Facebook, to Instagram, as well as the fact that we can stores thousands of photos on a phone that sits in our pocket, there’s no shortage of footage from our daily lives that we could look back on and show our kids someday.

This idea of documenting is the basis of Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, the appropriately titled documentary from Swedish director Stig Björkman about the famed actress.

His film looks back on the life of Bergman, with many of the documents such as letters and journal entries preserved by Bergman herself, serving as the primary focus. Bergman saved these items, and was committed to documenting her life thanks to her father, who captured photographs of his daughter as long as she could remember. In many ways this familiarity in front of a camera served as preparation for her career in movies.

Björkman looks back at her career, from her journey to America to begin in Hollywood, to the very end. Personal insight is gained through interviews with family members. He doesn’t aim just to paint her as a famous figure, but as a human, who like you and me, was far from perfect. It’s learned from interviews with her children that she wasn’t always there for them, often busy with her career and lifestyle. She made mistakes, such as an affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellino, leading to split with first husband Petter Aron Lindström. Bergman’s first daughter Pia Lindström gave sobering accounts of how her mothers abandonment affected her.

In Her Own Words gives us a good fair look at Bergman with no agenda or judgement laid out by Björkman. He is able to craft a fair picture of a woman who had an illustrious career and by using so much of the documents that she maintained and preserved, he’s truly able to do so in his own words.

Rating: 7.8/10

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