Ullmann offered to perform in a benefit in support of the new company. His then-wife was assisting Ullmann when she was in New York acting in Anna Christie on Broadway with John Lithgow. In 1979, a friend of mine was trying to start a regional company called the Main Street Theater in White Plains. Watching the film reminded me that I spent a day with Liv Ullmann once. Just a reminder (like we need one) that people kissed with great talent are not necessarily talented at being human beings. Trigorin is a selfish schmuck, but he’s a good enough writer to have stimulated something in Nina’s young heart. Nina has another pure soul, but reports we trust of her attempts at acting suggest that she isn’t there yet, and when we see her in the last act she looks as if she’s cracking up. Treplev has a pure soul, but he never breaks through self-indulgence to be a decent artist. Arkadina is probably a great actor but she is a dreadful mother to Treplev. And right there you see how a great artist can be a woeful human being. Her mother, a world-famous concert pianist, gives her a nice compliment, and then sits down to analyze the piece and then plays it herself with the mastery of a mature artist, not realizing she is devastating her daughter. Ullmann (playing Bergman’s daughter) sits at the piano and plays a bit of Chopin. But Bergman and Ullman are extraordinary, particularly in reaction shots, and there is one brilliant scene. The characters explain stuff endlessly in the past tense, and that’s usually enough to send me over the edge. There are things in it that drive me crazy. Just watched Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata again (with Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann) for the first time in decades.
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