Gelley, Ora. "Ingrid Bergman's Star Persona and the Alien Space of Stromboli." Cinema journal [0009-7101] 47.2 (2008). 26-.

 

        Ora Gelley provides a history of Ingrid Bergman's career in Hollywood, from her "discovery" in 1939 through her role in Rossellini's film Stromboli, land of God in 1949. She follows the evolution of Bergman's "star persona" throughout this period by comparing different critics' views of Bergman and chronologically analyzing her movie roles. Gelley points out that the American public readily accepted the disconnect between the Bergman's constructed Hollywood persona - spiritual, natural, innocent - and many of her movie roles (such as Notorious' Alicia) in which she played overtly sexual and deviant women only until Bergman's affair with Rossellini was made public. She argues that the more scandalous aspects of Bergman's personal character were forcefully subdued by Hollywood and then subsequently embraced and released by Rossellini.

        Through Gelley's discussion of Bergman in Notorious, we see the ways in which the film differs from the rest of Hitchcock's body of work. She points out that Notorious has more close-ups than any other Hitchcock film, with Hitchcock focusing on and coaching Bergman through subtle facial expressions instead of full-body gestures. Nonetheless, the heroine's body remains a source of intrigue and sexualization (as with other Hitchcock films), especially towards the beginning of the film. Gelley's treatment of this pull between the overt and subtle in Notorious also brings about a feminist critique, with the naturally sexual and independent Bergman being both subdued by Hitchcock's directing and the Hollywood star factory, and at the same time exploited through the same movie roles that both recognize and subsequently criminalize her sexuality in response to social norms in place for women of the 1940s.