Product Description

This 1962 production of Ibsen's immortal classic features Ingrid Bergman in the title role! Hedda Gabler has just come back from her honeymoon, married to boring but reliable academic George Tesman (Michael Redgrave). Refusing to tie herself down in life and name, Hedda is banking on George being appointed a professorship to secure a better life for the young couple. However, the arrival of cleaned up ex-lover Eilert threatens to destroy everything. Included is the bonus play, The Lady from the Sea starring Eileen Atkins and Denholm Elliott.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25942 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-07-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 75 minutes

Amazon.com
In one of the great dramatic roles in all of theater, the always magnificent Ingrid Bergman seethes with frustrated ambition. Hedda Gabler is a woman who, for financial security, has married an earnest and dutiful academic who lacks the passion and imagination that drive Hedda. When Eilert Lovborg (Trevor Howard, The Third Man), a former lover, returns to their city, she discovers that a new woman has rescued him from his alcoholism and given him the strength to write a brilliant book. Consumed with jealousy, Hedda seizes an opportunity to ruin Lovborg's life--and by doing so, places herself in the power of the glib and predatory Judge Brack (Ralph Richardson, The Fallen Idol), who longs to have his way with her. This 1963 British television version of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is skillfully condensed into a taut 75 minutes, fantastically played by the superb cast (which also includes Michael Redgrave, The Importance of Being Earnest). Bergman and Richardson, in particular, draw out every drop of hidden resentment and lust. Accompanying Hedda Gabler is a 1974 adaptation of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea, in which a mysterious man from the past threatens the marriage of an older doctor (Denholm Elliott, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and a younger woman (Eileen Atkins, Cold Comfort Farm). This solid production feels a bit stagey and the script could have been better edited for television, but it does capture the metaphysical chill of the stranger's presence and the drama of the young woman's craving for personal freedom. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Superb cast makes this a Must-See
It's been so long since I read the play that I can't compare this production, which another reviewer called "truncated," to the original. This is short but the collection of some of the finest actors in England plus Ingrid Bergman in her prime, make this a powerful performance. Ms. Bergman dominates every scene with her amazing presence. I had forgotten what a great actress she was. And, she is absolutely beautiful here. We are fortunate to have this on record.

at last
ingred bergman as hedda,i've waited 40 yrs for this and i'm not disapointed,bergman,redgrave,richardson,howard can you ask for anything better,a 5 star production...

"Better Truncated Ibsen Than No Ibsen At All"
This truncated adaptation of one of Ibsen's masterpieces does less than full justice to the elegant, classical dramatic architecture that distinguishes the craftsmanship of the original text. Moreover, as if to add insult to injury, additional scenes and new dialogue of matter merely narrated in the original are added here as unnecessary filler. For this reason, the production deserves less than 5 stars.

These limitations having been pointed out, what is nevertheless remarkable is the undeniable success of the extraordinary cast assembled here in conveying within a mere 75 minutes the essence of Ibsen's drama. Michael Redgrave, for instance, as the bumbling, foolish George Tesman is a scholar in the mode Nietzsche parodied and Ibsen similarly saw the folly of. Tesman is the sort of 19th century academic new man who believes one approaches a better conception of the real and the important by peering ever more closely at the domestic industries of Brabant in the Middle Ages. At the same time, inattentive to what's going on before his eyes, he's spectacularly unfit as a husband or a colleague. Ralph Richardson, in the reduced number of lines that remain to him, is a singularly reptilian, sophisticated Judge Brack, a true rival in at first witty and then sinister repartee to the aristocrat who's come down in the world, Hedda Gabler.

Ibsen once said that modern man is "a neurotic sufferer," and the principal exponent of such a conception of dramatic character here is, of course, Hedda herself. Ingrid Bergman plays this very character to the hilt. Spoiled, witty, above all bored to tears, she is cunning, manipulative, and finally at her wit's end. Great facial acting and caustic wit distinguish Bergman's Hedda. Her face is a book in which the audience, if not always the other characters, may read her thoughts. And she brings out the humor that is always in Ibsen. Her performance, even in truncated form, is in itself worth 6 stars.