Ingrid Bergman by Grace May Carter

 I am not a huge movie watcher but even I have heard of Ingrid Bergman - admittedly I coudln't pick her out of a line up but I know the name.  What interested me in this book was the fact it wasn't just a celebrity gossip book but rather covered her whole life.  In fact, I finished it feeling like a lot had been only touched upon from her Hollywood years and that there was far more beneath the words than this book told us.

Whilst every actor has "scandals" in their past Ingrid Bergman's are not discussed in any great detail.  They are mentioned but in an "in passing" sort of way rather than covering them in great depth.  Where it does excel is in her early life before she came to Hollywood and there is a great deal of very informative investigation done in to her childhood and family life.  The other thing it does really well is the whole Hollywood Machine and how the Studios had such a stranglehold on the talent - definitely gives the impression that they were a commodity rather than a person.

As much as I enjoyed the book it did feel like an introduction to the actress and it has left me wanting to read some more in depth about certain areas of her life.  Bit of an Ingrid Bergman 101.

This review has been a long time coming.  I actually read this book between the 25th and 27th July 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about all the plot lines.  Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.