Pathetic courage and faux class.

I just got done watching Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express. I liked it; it was humorous in more places than I expected. I did also read the novel on which it is based off of, inked by Agatha Christie. This I also liked, but not as much as I hoped for. Nonetheless decent entertainment.

SPOILERS

Now, onto the post's heading. I was particularly intrigued by the portrayal of Greta Ohlsson played by legendary screen actress Ingrid Bergman. I found her execution of her lines very amusing. For example her character becomes pious after seeing Jesus in the clouds surrounded by brown children and it is this revelation that her character is inspired to go to Africa and "help little brown children." Of course, credit should also be given to Paul Dehn, the script writer, for giving a talented actress like Bergman to work with. In the dvd's special features Bergman insisted that she wanted make the character "a crazy nanny" and so she did. Honestly, her interview with Poiret was one of a kind. By far the best interview that Lumet had set up, which was rather different than what happened in the novel.

But, ah, admiration for Bergman's acting talent is wear my admiration stops. Forget her fight with cancer. Many have died with cancer and I see her as no difference, after all she had people drooling over her and forgiving her for every since, or "sin", under the sun. I quickly wiki'd her and learned that, to no surprise, she went through several marriages. The first marriage she had two affairs that is known. The first affair she luckily didn't get pregnant, but the second one she did. While on shoot I believe. So shortly after her second child was born (first child born within marriage to her first husband), she divorces her first husband and marries the director who impregnated in Mexico. After five or so years of marriage, and with the birth of a set of twins, he cheats on her and then later leaves her. Karma is a bitch. Later she remarries in which it would be her third marriage.

The Daily Beast deeply cares on how she was treated by US Senator in the 1950s. As Marlow Stern writes, " Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D-CO), a rank moralist who opposed FDR’s New Deal policies, slut-shamed the actress on the Senate floor." What? Do leftist moral relativists always add in X policy that a politician opposes that is beloved leftists at that time? Seems like it. And of course the "you slut-shamed" card. But what exactly did the senator say?

“Mr. President, now that the stupid film about a pregnant woman and a volcano [Stromboli] has exploited America with the usual finesse, to the mutual delight of RKO and the debased Rossellini, are we merely to yawn wearily, greatly relieved that this hideous thing is finished and then forget it? I hope not. A way must be found to protect the people in the future against that sort of gyp,” he proclaimed.

Sen. Johnson then proposed a bill wherein movies would be approved for licenses based on the moral compasses of those behind the picture, insisting that Bergman “had perpetrated an assault upon the institution of marriage,” and going so far as to call her “a powerful influence for evil.”

In Johnson's defense he wasn't too far from the truth. It's now 2018 as I write this and given how many think sex outside of marriage is totally A-OKAY the sexual adventures of a Swede (go figure) being treated nonchalantly by so-called progressives comes to no surprise.

What more interesting is how Bergman responded when she decided to return to the States.

“No, I have no regrets at all,” she said, unleashing that radiant smile. “I regret the things I didn’t do—not what I did. I have done what I felt like.”

This ties in a very narcissistic mindset on what is said earlier in the Daily Beast article when Bergman ponders about the films that either inspired her or which she acted in.

It’s the tale of a gal from Stockholm who grew up obsessed with the story of Joan of Arc, marveling at how this young, rebellious woman followed the voices inside her head, social mores be damned.

Well, that doesn't mean to sleep with whomever you "fall in love with" (it wasn't love). Stern attributes a line said by her character, Joan, in the film to how she lived her life.

“I don’t want any roots,” Bergman says in the film. “I want to be free.”

And, despite her marriage to Lindström—which produced a daughter, Pia—Bergman lived freely, much like many of her male movie star contemporaries.

Freely? Well damn social mores of fidelity and commitment, eh?

"She’d won an Oscar (for Gaslight) and purchased her family a luxurious home fitted with a gigantic pool in Benedict Canyon, yet still suffered from what she calls “a daily sadness.”

“I never understood the kind of happiness I was longing for,” she recalls in the film. “We finally got a house, fixed it up the way we wanted. But then that bird of passage started to flex its wings again.”

It seems Bergman wanted the next excitement after the material goods of earth bored her.

But shortly after the 1960s, the height of the Sexual Revolution, another politician wanted to address  Senator Johnson's remarks.

“Twenty-two years after Sen. Johnson’s disgusting tirade, on April 19, 1972, Senator Charles Percy (R-IL) read an apology to Bergman on the Senate floor.

Mr. President, one of the world’s loveliest, most gracious and most talented women was made the victim of bitter attack in this Chamber 22 years ago. Today I would like to pay long overdue tribute to Ingrid Bergman, a true star in every sense of the word.“I know that across the land, millions of Americans would wish to join me in expressing their regrets for the personal and professional persecution that caused Ingrid Bergman to leave this country at the height of her career,” he continued. “Miss Bergman is not only welcome in America; we are deeply honored by her visits here.”

The issue here is that I see no apology needed. One wanted to warn the American people of how zombie like devotion to an actress who's private life was a mess (but she was a wonderful mother! some may say) and to not let it influence their sexual morals and actions while another, for whatever, went the fanboy route. Percy would have probably pre-ordered Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman. (Apparently the book reads like it was written by a fanboy.)

So yes, Bergman is a "true star in every sense of the word." Multiple divorces. Multiple marriages. Multiple kids from multiple marriages and affairs. Rootlessness. And the ever so smug "I regret nothing," mentality. But is she a "class act" as Stern writes? Only in the eyes of people like Stern. They are the ones that produce phrases like "rank moralist." Well, you can't cover up urine smell with makeup, costumes and the industry's highest acting award. Urine is urine even if it's named of Ingrid Bergman.