L'amour était presque parfait: Ingrid Bergman et Robert Capa, les amants magnifiques par Jean-Michel Thénard (review)
2024; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 97; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tfr.2024.a920013
ISSN2329-7131
Autores Tópico(s)Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence
ResumoReviewed by: L'amour était presque parfait: Ingrid Bergman et Robert Capa, les amants magnifiques par Jean-Michel Thénard Warren Motte Thénard, Jean-Michel. L'amour était presque parfait: Ingrid Bergman et Robert Capa, les amants magnifiques. Seuil, 2023. ISBN 978-2-02-146353-8. Pp. 256. Jean-Michel Thénard, an associate editor of the Canard Enchaîné, suggests that in order to tell this story of the love affair between the actress Ingrid Bergman and the war photographer Robert Capa, he relied upon notes taken by yet another photojournalist, David Seymour (familiarly known as "Chim"), during a long conversation with Bergman on the evening in 1954 when they heard the news of Capa's death in Indochina. Those notes had long lain forgotten in the Hotel d'Inghilterra Roma, he claims, and had only recently come to light, in the course of some renovations. At the end of his preface, Thénard nevertheless declares, "Si le lecteur le décide, ce livre peut donc être lu aussi comme une pure fiction" (12); and it probably makes more sense to read the book in that manner. In this conversation, we hear Bergman's voice much more frequently than Chim's. Her account of the way she and Capa met, at the Ritz in Paris, a city still reverberating with the joy of the Liberation, brims with romance. Much of the rest of her tale—at least as Thénard tells it—is a festival of Hollywood gossip and largely indiscriminate name-dropping. Mentions of Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr, Gary Cooper, Gina Lollobrigida, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Cary Grant, Groucho Marx, and many, many others will surely please those readers enamored of celebrity culture. Gestures toward readers interested in literary culture are more rare, but one of those is worthy of note. Driving through Paris in a military jeep, at the corner of the rue de Rennes and the boulevard Saint-Germain, Capa and Bergman almost run over a small man affected by a strong divergent squint. Inevitably, it is Sartre, and that event conveniently provides the philosopher with an occasion to philosophize: "Vous savez que dans la plus insignifiante de nos actions, il y a une immensité d'héroïsme, puisque chaque instant qui vient peut se révéler celui de notre mort" (95). Other scenes will seem likewise a bit contrived, including a meeting with Picasso, wherein the reported dialogue is apt to make even the most hardened reader cringe. Yet loves rules all, it is often said, and the depth of Bergman's feeling for Capa is never in doubt here. She remarks that he often boasted of speaking five languages, each with the accent of a different language, "et quand il parlait anglais avec moi," she says, "j'entendais l'accent de l'amour" (124). It was largely through that love, Thénard argues, that Bergman came to realize her fundamental autonomy, and took her place in Hollywood and the broader world as an independent woman. Some callous souls will likely be skeptical of that contention, and readers who crave meatier fare will go away from this book hungry. Yet anyone who is even mildly interested in the mid-century star system will be able to gaze upon an impressive array of constellations here, in both close focus and long. [End Page 149] Warren Motte University of Colorado Boulder Copyright © 2024 American Association of Teachers of French
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