Trivia / Autumn Sonata

• Cast the Expert: Ingrid Bergman is essentially playing herself here—an internationally-renowned performer who abandoned her family to pursue her career, and had gone through multiple marriages.
• Playing Against Type: Lena Nyman, most well-known to international audiences for I Am Curious (Yellow) and to Swedish audiences as a comedienne, in a dramatic role as a severely disabled girl.
• Real-Life Relative: Linn Ullmann, daughter of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman when the two had a relationship in The '60s, plays young Eva in the flashback scenes.
• Reality Subtext: Ingrid Bergman had been diagnosed with breast cancer a few years earlier, and by the time she made this film she'd had a mastectomy, which led to other complications that limited her physical movement. This helped underline her performance as an aging, somewhat sickly woman. The breast cancer proved to be terminal, leading to her death in 1982.
• Troubled Production: Ingmar and Ingrid butted heads quite a lot on set. He thought she overacted and tried to play the film as a 1940s melodrama.
  Ingmar Bergman: It was a kind of language barrier, but in a profound sense. She had rehearsed her entire part in front of the mirror, complete with intonations and self-conscious gestures. It was clear that she had a different approach to her profession than the rest of us. She was still living in the 1940s. I discovered early into our rehearsals that to be understanding and offer a sympathetic ear did not work. In her case I was forced to use tactics that I normally rejected, the first and foremost being aggression. Once she told me: 'If you don't tell me how I should do this scene, I'll slap you!' I rather liked that.

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