Hedda Gabler is a 1963 adaptation of the famous stage play about a scheming married woman who seeks to destroy the life of a former lover.
There’s a certain savagery to the emotional manipulations of those with power to do so that make even the cold cut of a steel blade seem positively dull in comparison. Think of the cruelty of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos‘ devastating play Les liaisons dangereuses (adapted into film three times, most famously as Dangerous Liaisons) or even Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct. These are ruthless people of singular intent, with love both their weapon and their weakness. Dozens more have made their way famous for being as such, and of course, we love them for it.
One name synonymous with wretched scheming is Hedda Gabler, the main character in a play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, first performed in 1891. She’s a vile creature at the center of a small but brutal story that has, in the near hundred thirty years since then, been on stage almost uninterrupted and adapted for the screen numerous times, from an early silent film to the most recent, a critically-dismissed remake in 2016, though the most notable is perhaps the one that earned Glenda Jackson an Oscar nod in 1975 for her turn as Hedda (in a film co-starring Patrick Stewart).
However, there is a BBC television adaptation from 1963 that draws our attention this time. It stars Ingrid Bergman as Hedda and is without a doubt, a deliciously dark filmed play that simply seethes with rancor and melodrama. Honestly, despite its old TV film quality, is nonetheless a juicy little soap opera with some devilish shenanigans and a slew of excellent performances that make it almost clinically addictive in seeing where it ends.
It swirls in stormy circles about the unhappy aristocratic Hedda, recently married to George Tesman (Michael Redgrave), a scholarly historian with hopes of an appointment to a nearby prestigious university. She’s rather bored with all his pursuits not to mention a six-month honeymoon that has left her antsy and ornery. She is not in love with her husband but is dutifully absorbed, thinking at her age it’s best to settle and have a man of potential distinguishment support her. Calm down. It’s the 1890s, let’s recall.
Back in their spacious villa, she is visited by an old school friend named Thea Elvsted (Dilys Hamlett), though she forgets her name (in a telling trait that perfectly sums up her self-absorbent), explaining to Hedda that she’s left her husband and taken up with Eilert Løvborg (Trevor Howard), a writer who we then learn is George’s competitor for the teaching position. More so, we discover that Hedda and Eilert were once lovers GASP, and if there is anything that Hedda dislikes more than her husband’s platitudes, it’s knowing that Eilert might actually be happy with another woman. Gee. How selfish of him.
Driven by jealousy, Hedda is a nasty snake, her oily machinations behind the scenes leading to all sorts of personal horrors as she pits some against others and others to worse. How damning she is without anyone truly seeing it. I love how that works. Either way, for such a small cast and shot mostly on one set, this is a surprisingly spacious story that widens the further it unspools, with all kinds of verbal sparring and spiteful acrobatics giving it greater and greater legs. You want to listen to these people talk. Bergman and Sir Ralph Richardson on screen at the same time is like peanut butter and chocolate spread on warm toast. That’s a thing, right? It’s good is what I’m saying.
Full of proper histrionics, the 75-minute production is a marvel for its slow character development, one that has us at once dislike Hedda on her arrival and then seed deeply a sinister hatred for what she soon becomes as she pulls the puppet strings on a dastardly plot. It’s great fun to watch as Bergman seems consumed by the darkness that shapes the pitiless woman. It’s shocking the lengths she descends to and I guarantee, you’ll be swallowed into her hell with every tick that passes. It leads to an end that you won’t once guess coming until it all pours from the corners onto her lap.
It’s surprising how affecting Ibsen’s story is, how compact yet expertly constructed it comes about, how each character bears precisely-measured weight against all others in maintaining such striking balance. This is great movie making, taunt and tight with a superb cast and one heckuva spin from Bergman. Give it a watch. Most can find it on YouTube right now.