Liv Ullmann, no more a ‘spinning dancer’

At the Smith Rafael Film Center on Friday, Feb. 1, actress/director/writer

Liv Ullmann was onstage talking with California Film Institute Director of Programming Richard Peterson, and although there were the formal trappings of such an event — meticulously edited film clips and carefully planned questions — the thoughts and memories somehow flowed like real conversation. That’s the highest compliment one can give such an event.

This local event, made possible by Swedish Consul General Barbro Osher, was part of Bergman 100, a yearlong worldwide celebration of the centenary of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman with whom Ullmann had so often worked, for whom she served as a muse, to whom she was at one time married, and with whom she cherished a lifelong friendship.

Her affection and respect for him was reflected in everything she said: He was not dour and dark, said Ullmann, but full of optimism and hope; he claimed to be an atheist, but “he did, he really did” long for an afterlife in which he could “see the people that he loved here. He may not like that I say that, but it is the truth.”

The conversation started with Bergman, but Ullmann, at 80, is a storyteller, and as she spoke, her focus widened. She talked about her own career and about women attaining enough strength and power to give up being a “spinning dancer,” the profound coming-to-power moment “when one is grown up enough to say what she thinks.”

As to plain talk: I had a chance before the event began to ask her a question, always a bit awkward before you’ve heard the person speak. Famously, Ullmann had fallen in love with Bergman while making “Persona.” That was love, not coercion, but I asked what she thought of #MeToo.

“You’re a journalist,” she said. “Didn’t you ever fall in love with another journalist? I was 25, and we fell in love, and I met my husband. I won’t even talk about that now. Of course, that happens in any profession. I hope it doesn’t become a witch hunt . ... A lot of people have misused their power in a special way.

“You know what we should talk about,” continued Ullmann, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and co-founder and honorary chair of the International Rescue Committee’s Women’s Refugee Commission. “The refugees in the world who need water and go 4 miles every day and know they can be killed or raped. That need to survive for their children. Those are the women we should talk about for #MeToo.”

Onstage, this didn’t come up at all. To be in Bergman’s movies, said Ullmann, “was a joy.” He taught her not to think about acting, “but to go with your feelings, just go to your soul.”

On a trip to Rome, she and Bergman had met Federico Fellini, she recalled. The two filmmakers liked each other so much that Fellini invited Bergman and Ullmann to dinner at his house.

“Ingmar talked and told stories,” said Ullmann, and everyone but Fellini’s wife, actress Giulietta Masina, was animated. Masina sat silently, until at one point, when Fellini went into the kitchen, Bergman asked her if she would sing for him and Ullmann. She had started her career as a singer/ pianist/dancer, and so she sang for a moment.

Then Fellini came back. “The moment I leave,” he said to his wife, “you make a fool of yourself.” Masina got up and went into the garden, where she picked small white flowers she gave to her guests before they left. And years later, said Ullmann, it was on that incident that she based her portrayal of Nora in “A Doll’s House,” which she performed all over the world, including on Broadway. (The story compelled me afterward to read up about the FelliniMasina marriage. It lasted for 51 years, and she died four months after he did.)

As to Ullmann’s plans, she wants to write more, “about the blue hour, when the light of the afternoon is becoming evening ... and what it means to be old. There are incredible possibilities.”

P.S. Gary Meyer attended the first event in the weekend’s series of Ullmann appearances, a reception the day before, at Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive. Her talk, he said, “was one of the most moving sessions with an artist we have seen. It brought people to tears.”

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