Ingrid Bergman Retrospective at UCLA

When Ingrid Bergman made her Hollywood debut in 1939 in “Intermezzo,” the movies’ reigning actress was another Swede, Greta Garbo--who had an image so unapproachable that her 1939 “Ninotchka” used the tagline “Garbo laughs” as if it were a millennial event.

Not so Bergman. She laughed so easily, smiled so often, that she seemed by comparison a ruddy-cheeked farm girl, epitome of the natural, earthy young woman without complexes or reticence, facing life joyously or bravely. She stayed fresh and vibrant for the next four decades, becoming, with Katharine Hepburn, Anna Magnani and few others, one of the cinema’s imperishably great actresses.

A UCLA retrospective starting Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Melnitz Theater gives us a Bergman we rarely see: the young actress who, from the age of 19 on, made 10 films in Sweden before emigrating to the United States. These rarely revived movies give us invaluable glimpses of Bergman, of early Swedish sound films and of the neglected career of her most frequent director, Gustaf Molander, who surpasses even Roberto Rossellini.

Molander directed Bergman six times during the ‘30s and once more, in his final film, the 1967 “Stimulantia.” It was Molander who made the first “Intermezzo” (screening Saturday), prompting David Selznick’s admiration and her world breakthrough. It’s a classic of smooth, knowing romantic kitsch, with a great ingenue showcase for Bergman as the brilliant pianist who, without calculation, captures the heart of a violin virtuoso. She makes him throw off wife and family and plunge into world concertizing and grand passion until, selflessly, she leaves him. Few “other women” are more sympathetic, and the Swedish “Intermezzo,” rougher and less glossy than the American, is preferable in many ways: just as kitschy but more emotional, somehow sweeter.

Also showing is Gustaf Edgren’s 1935 “Walpurgis Night,” a weird mixture of corny comedy and lurid melodrama that, with shocking candor, moves from arch complaints about declining Swedish birth rates through abortion, blackmail and murder to the Foreign Legion.

On Sunday: another Molander, the 1935 poor boy-rich girl romance, “Swedenhielms,” and Bergman’s debut film, Edvin Adolphson and Sigurd Wallen’s 1935 gangster comedy, “The Count of the Old Town.” But “Intermezzo” stays supreme, reminding us that few things in movies are more heartbreaking than losing Ingrid Bergman. After all, having the guts to walk away from her in “Casablanca” ennobled Bogart for all time. Information: (213) 206-8013.

The retrospective on French avant-garde film producer Stephane Tchalgadjieff continues at Melnitz with another uncompromising contemporary classic: novelist-film maker Marguerite Duras’ 1975 “India Song” (tonight at 7:30). Here, Duras’ style of incantatory narration, begun in Resnais’ “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” is carried to logical extremes. The actors (Delphine Seyrig, Michel Lonsdale) never speak in this tale of promiscuity and wild, unconsummated love in the 1930s French community in Calcutta. Instead, they pose in dances or friezes while a host of kibitzers, including Duras, comment on or evoke the incidents. The writing is beautiful and poetic, the images (shot by Bruno Nuytten) fascinating but slightly stiff, the sound track extraordinary. The title song itself may haunt your memory for days.

Another Duras film, the psychological duologue “Baxter, Vera Baxter” also shows Tuesday, unfortunately without subtitles. And two more by Jacques Rivette are screened Thursday night: The 1975 “Duelle,” with Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier as dueling goddesses in a playfully macabre mix of mystery and myth, and the 1976 “Noroit,” a failed but interesting attempt to adapt experimental theater and lush movie scenery to Cyril Tourneur’s “The Revenger’s Tragedy.”