One of the biggest stars of the 1970's, Liv Ullman joins the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda jackson, Maggie Smith, Julie Christie, Isabelle Adjani and Catherine Deneuve (among many others) as evidence that you did not have to be an American beauty to make it big on the big screen, and many of these glorious ladies went Hollywood for at least one or two movies. This sensational documentary covers the life of the Norwegian actress (born in Japan) and gives a glimpse to her struggles, her joys, her dreams, her darkness and her humanity. Many film clips up through "The Serpent's Egg" covers a good deal of her work, with even a glimpse of her on stage in Norway in a Eugene O'Neill play.
As an adult, I've become much more familiar with her non-Hollywood based work, so this was a nice companion piece to those films and a glimpse into the real woman who is very sincere about her feelings, talking about varying emotions and how one cannot be one thing all the time. Her relationships, professional and personal, are discussed, particularly her professional and personal relationship with director ingmar Bergman and her beautiful daughter. She discusses honestly how she balanced being a working actress and a mother, and how she was able to balance everything out and enjoy a career while remaining true to herself and yet very much involved in the human race.
When she steps out to give an Oscar to Peter Finch (who had passed away), you know clips of the two films they did together are going to pop up, even though they were not hits. This deals with both the good and the bad in her career, and she discusses with great detail her own involvement in creating characters that she could research or understand, yet also talks about her own realization of her imperfections which definitely humanizes her all the more.
There is absolutely no ego, even though she does discuss a bit of temperament, saying that without any of that, the work would be boring and unchallenging, just as a relationship would be without conflict. As this documentary is now over 40 years old, it would be interesting to see where her life has gone since then, but something tells me as is evidenced in her eyes, nothing has changed but the year.
As an adult, I've become much more familiar with her non-Hollywood based work, so this was a nice companion piece to those films and a glimpse into the real woman who is very sincere about her feelings, talking about varying emotions and how one cannot be one thing all the time. Her relationships, professional and personal, are discussed, particularly her professional and personal relationship with director ingmar Bergman and her beautiful daughter. She discusses honestly how she balanced being a working actress and a mother, and how she was able to balance everything out and enjoy a career while remaining true to herself and yet very much involved in the human race.
When she steps out to give an Oscar to Peter Finch (who had passed away), you know clips of the two films they did together are going to pop up, even though they were not hits. This deals with both the good and the bad in her career, and she discusses with great detail her own involvement in creating characters that she could research or understand, yet also talks about her own realization of her imperfections which definitely humanizes her all the more.
There is absolutely no ego, even though she does discuss a bit of temperament, saying that without any of that, the work would be boring and unchallenging, just as a relationship would be without conflict. As this documentary is now over 40 years old, it would be interesting to see where her life has gone since then, but something tells me as is evidenced in her eyes, nothing has changed but the year.
