by
Liv Ullmann
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Mae West is borne in between two strong men with long hair and open-necked shirts with masses of muséles underneath. They whisper in my ear that these are her lovers. She has yellow corkscrew curls and her face is heavily made up, and she has false eyelashes that are coming loose. They ask me to come and meet her. She so wants to know me. Dumbly we grasp each other’s hands.
As I walk away, I hear her hiss to one of the lovers, “Who the hell was that?”
she doesn't get enough credit for her wit
It still happens (although I kick myself inwardly) that I am with a man and find myself apologizing for my strength. Because I see him as the weaker, and perhaps therefore frightened by that strength.
I look him in the eyes as I praise his progress and minimize my own.
ahhh
Nora stands in the door and says: “I don’t know what will become of me. I don’t know where I am going. I only know that I can no longer bother about what others say. I must find my own way.”
Is this not where life’s possibilities lie? Not necessarily to arrive, but always to be on the way, in movement.
Also in love.
Also with the same hand in mine—if I am lucky.
<33
I realize I was brought up to be the person others wanted me to be, so that they would like me and not be bothered by my presence.
That person was not me.
When I began to be me, I felt that I had more to give.
Life was richer.
I am trying to eliminate all the bad conscience caused by things of no significance that stand in the way of what I really believe in.
Nora says to Helmer: “But I have lived only to be your plaything. And you wanted it that way.”
I hope that two people can grow together, side by side, and bring joy to each other. Without one having to be crushed so that the other may stay strong.
Perhaps maturing is also to let others be.
To allow myself to be what I am.
“No one will sacrifice his honor for love,” says Helmer.
And Nora replies: “Millions of women have.”
I ask Sam Waterston, who is playing Helmer, if he would be willing to give up his profession for a woman if for some reason doing this were essential for continued relationship. Sam doesn’t think so, and asks if I would.
“Yes, I could.” I think about it. “I believe many women do, because we have such belief that love is important.”
“But don’t you value yourself more?” Sam asks.
“That is what we do. We can give up our profession because we value what we are.”
I am having success and everything assumes a proportion unrelated to me.
A bodyguard sits in my living room, and shows his revolver to anyone who asks.
The theatre is packed every night. I try to play Nora as if Liv weren’t involved in so many other things.
I love Nora. She is beautiful, and perfectly drawn by Ibsen.
Her need to be accepted. Her fear of presenting herself as she really is.
A woman who says one thing and means something quite different. Who wants to be friends with, and liked by, everyone. Who exclaims, “Don’t be angry with me!” the moment she senses she might have said something that could offend. And who all the while lives her secret life, and with strength and determination conducts financial transactions (unusual for a woman in those days) in order to save her husband’s life.
This woman, who uses and manipulates those around her while at the same time wanting to help and love them, refuses to do something she feels is morally repugnant to her when the decisive moment comes. It is beyond her imagination to conceive of exploiting the situation when Dr. Rank declares his love and begs to give her the money she so badly needs.
Like Helmer, Nora is one of society’s victims. She behaves in a way one would expect of a woman, of a wife, of a doll child.
She plays her part just as Helmer plays his. Neither of them gives the other a chance, because they are always in service to the other’s role.
When she finally sees, she also understands that the anger she feels over everything that is false between them is directed just as much against herself as against him. Her responsibility was as great as his. She hopes that the change will also take place in him—not for her sake, but for his own.
Not because he is threatened by a new Nora, who shows a strength he doesn’t comprehend, and which frightens him, but because he has discovered a new human beirfg whose motives he may learn to understand.
I believe that Nora’s most beautiful declaration and act of love is leaving her husband.
Ten, twenty pills in my mouth at a time go down easily. Jenny becomes increasingly agitated, but the countenance remains calm. She sits for a while looking at the empty bottle, shakes her head, then she lies down and rests her head against the pillows she has arranged. For‘a while she lies staring at the ceiling.
It suddenly strikes me how right it would have been if she had looked at her watch, noted the time of her death—and at the same moment the thought comes to me, she does it.
It only becomes theatre when I turn my face toward the wall and do not die.
Afterward I feel empty. Notice that someone is crying. Not only the actor but also the spectator can at certain times participate in unreality as if it were real.
Ingmar is quiet and subdued and says, “Well, now at least I won’t have to commit suicide.”
lol
The collaboration between a director and an actor, if it is a good one, is extremely intense, and very often there is a touch of aggression—usually from the actor. If you are ordered about for a whole day by a director—to walk and stand and talk, look a certain way, take the lunch break now and finish for the day now (even if spoken by a genius)—there are times when you think: Shoot the man. I want to be free, feel free. I hate him.
Then you let your anger out in small clouds of steam, and everyone knows that it doesn’t mean a thing.
I love close-ups. To me they are a challenge. The closer a camera comes, the more eager I am to show a completely naked face, show what is behind the skin, the eyes; inside the head. Show the thoughts that are forming.
To work with Ingmar is to go on a journey of discovery within my own self. To be able to realize all the things I dreamed of as a girl.
Discard the mask and show what is behind it.
The camera comes so close—and there is much of myself that is captured.
Closer to the audience than in any other medium—the human being is shown on the screen.
The camera meets me more exposed than the lover who thinks he has read my thoughts.
Even when I tell myself that I am expressing a role, I can never completely hide who I am, what I am.
The audience, at the moment of identification, meets a person, not a role, not an actress.
A face which confronts them directly:
This is what I know about women. This is what I have experienced, have seen. This is what I want to share.
It is no longer a question of make-up, of hair, of beauty.
It is an exposure that goes way beyond.
When the camera is as close as Ingmar’s sometimes gets, it doesn’t only show a face, but also what kind of life this face has seen.
Thoughts behind the forehead, something the face didn’t know about itself, but which the public will see and recognize.
Privately we long for exactly this kind of recognition: that others should perceive what we really are, deep inside.
To make a film with Ingmar is, for me, to have this experience.