Quick Links
By the time Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini's first movie together was released in 1950, their affair had already become public.
The Swedish actress and the Italian neorealism auteur worked together on drama Stromboli, set in one of the Aeolian Islands and telling the story of a Lithuanian woman displaced in Italy after the war.
As they tried to recreate the story of a Latvian woman Rossellini had met during one of his travels, he and Bergman fell in love while she was still married to dentist Petter Aron Lindström, with whom he had a daughter, Pia. The scandal that ensued saw Bergman being ostracized in Hollywood and her native Sweden.
Correspondence between Bergman and Rossellini showed that the actress had opened up to him years before they even met, writing him a romantic letter where she asked him to work together. In her first letter to the filmmaker, the Casablanca star wrote "Ti amo" to prove how little Italian she knew at the time.
Ingrid Bergman Penned A Romantic Letter To Roberto Rossellini In 1947
Years before their affair began, Bergman wrote a letter to the Italian director after seeing two of his most famous films.
In her message, the Swedish star expressed her desire to work with him and gave Rossellini a little taste of her Italian by writing "Ti amo".
"I saw your films Open City and Paisan, and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only 'ti amo,' I am ready to come and make a film with you," Bergman wrote in her heartfelt letter.
According to The Criterion Collection, the Oscar-winning actress didn't know where to send her letter at first, and she eventually addressed it to Minerva Film Corporation in Rome.
Roberto Rossellini Sent Ingrid Bergman A Film Treatment In Response
However, Bergman's words only got to Rossellini the following year, on his 42nd birthday.
"I just received with great emotion your letter, which happens to arrive on the anniversary of my birthday as the most precious gift. It is absolutely true that I dreamed to make a film with you . . ." the director replied in a short telegram.
But Rossellini didn't put his desire to work with Bergman to rest and subsequently sent her a synopsis of a film that resembled that of his Stromboli.
During a trip to a region north of Rome, the filmmaker got struck by a Latvian woman in a camp, awaiting to return home. He couldn't speak to her long as a guard ordered him to go away. When he returned, Rossellini was informed the woman had gone away and relocated to the Lipari Islands, having married a man from the area.
"Shall we go together and look for her? Shall we together visualize her life in the little village near Stromboli, where the soldier took her?" Rossellini asked Bergman in his letter, proceeding to summarize his movie in a few paragraphs about love, adjusting to a different reality, and, ultimately, freedom.
"Could you possibly come to Europe? I could invite you for a trip to Italy and we could go over this thing at leisure? Would you like me to go in for this film? When? What do you think of it? Excuse me for all these questions but I could go on questioning you forever," he also wrote.
Ingrid Bergman And Rossellini Got Married In 1950
Bergman did come to Europe to meet with Rossellini and the two made Stromboli together, a film that was well received in Italy, but initially panned in America and Britain before more recent reviews reassessed its artistic value.
When the film was released, Bergman had just welcomed a son with Rossellini, Robin, born in February 1950, days before the film opened in the US. She had asked Lindström to divorce her, but he refused. On top of that, contacts with their daughter Pia, who was living with her father in Sweden, were sparse.
The scandal had an impact on Bergman's career and reputation, the affair being supposedly in contrast to the pure characters she had often played on screen and that media and public opinion tended to equate with her, as Bergman pointed out later in life.
A week after Robin was born, Bergman divorced her first husband by proxy and married Rossellini according to the Mexican law. In 1952, the pair had twin daughters, Isotta Ingrid and Isabella, who would follow in her mother's footsteps and become an award-winning actress. After Stromboli, Bergman and Rossellini worked together on four other films.
Eventually, the pair filed for divorce after the director had an affair with Bengali screenwriter Sonali Dasgupta. He and Bergman officially went their separate ways in 1957.
Bergman remarried in 1958, tying the knot with Swedish theatrical entrepreneur Lars Schmidt. They divorced in 1975, but would remain close until her death from breast cancer in London in 1982.