Hedda Gabler

CinemaSerf

I was initially quite nervous about Ingrid Bergman's casting here. Her eponymous character calls for a woman with quite a cruel streak in her and I feared she might not have the wherewithal. Well, though she isn't great, she does well enough as the plotting woman married to the loving but underwhelming "George" (Sir Michael Redgrave). Bored and restless, she finds a new game to play when her ex-beau "Lovborg" (a competent Trevor Howard) arrives. He is still keen on the now married woman, and she plays the part of distant and alluring in equal measure until she realises that she does not have a monopoly on his affections and her intellectual claws come out! This is one of those tea-time dramas we became accustomed to in the UK where a story with a great deal of nuance and slow-roasted characterisations was condensed into 75 minutes. To get any enjoyment from this at all, you must remember that it is a television adaptation - and a rather static one at that - that cannot possibly do proper justice to Ibsen's original work. The cast, though, work well to give us a sense of just what the author had in mind and this also ought to encourage us to read the play. I would suggest another, extended version on screen bit surprisingly, I don't think there is one - not in the English language anyway.