{"id":143252,"date":"2026-01-27T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143252"},"modified":"2026-01-26T10:42:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T15:42:37","slug":"happy-birthday-ingrid-thulin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143252","title":{"rendered":"“I think I’m invisible sometimes.” — Ingrid Thulin"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIt’s her birthday today. <\/p>\n

I’m really proud of the video-essay I wrote on her for Criterion: The Eerie Intensity of Ingrid Thulin<\/a><\/p>\n

One of Ingmar Bergman’s repertory company of actors. As heavy-hitting as Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson. She wasn’t fully fluent in English and therefore she didn’t move into international stardom the way Liv Ullmann was able to do. But let’s not get it twisted. She worked with the great European directors: Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Alain Resnais … Of course her legacy is her work with Bergman. Her work in Bergman’s films is as good as it gets. She trained as a ballerina before switching to acting. She appeared in a number of films and television series in the 1950s, before catching Bergman’s eye. He cast her as the daughter-in-law in Wild Strawberries<\/i>, where she makes an enormous impression, her chilly blonde beauty hiding a dark ambiguous soul.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter Wild Strawberries<\/i>, she appeared in two more Bergman films, Brink of Life<\/i> and The Magician<\/i>, in two wildly different roles, giving just a glimpse of her dazzling diversity. Unlike other movie stars, she did not have a personality like a “fingerprint” of personality. Whatever Thulin’s personality, it was completely irrelevant to her in her work. She was truly uncanny. Like, who WAS she? It’s literally impossible to know.<\/p>\n

In the early 60s, she appeared in Ingmar Bergman films, back to back, Winter Light<\/i> and The Silence<\/i>. They are two of his most ruthlessly uningratiating films. In Winter Light<\/i>, Thuline play a mousy tormented woman, in love with a pastor. In The Silence<\/i>, she plays an alcoholic dying woman holed up in a hotel room in an unnamed city. These two roles, played so close together, have to be one of the most astonishing displays of acting virtuosity in any career. The films are so difficult to take, they are so unremittingly bleak, their reach will always be smaller than something more accessible, like Wild Strawberries<\/i>, or even Persona<\/i>. Thulin is a Priestess of Bleak. Her anguish is so total in Winter Light<\/i> she’s difficult to look at at times. In The Silence<\/i>, she drinks, smokes, masturbates, gasps for oxygen to come into her diseased lungs, goes raging against the dying of the light, fears death, courts death … it’s a mind-blowing performance. <\/p>\n

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\nShe went to places in her work other actors don’t go. Not because they are afraid (although this may be true), but because they literally can’t conceive the depths it is even possible to go. Thulin is frightening that way. She saw farther and traveled farther.<\/p>\n

Her hands are maybe the most expressive hands of any actor. They’re agonized, restless. Claw-like, desperate. They look like they’d keep clutching and wringing and twisting themselves up, even after death. She was an actress of supreme control\/intelligence – and yet her work does not feel studied, or pre-planned. Her hands have a life\/mind of their own.<\/p>\n

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\nShe appeared in more films directed by Bergman: The Hour of the Wolf<\/i>, the television movie The Rite<\/i>, and the great Cries and Whispers<\/i>, where she is truly terrifying. There’s one damn near unwatchable scene. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know the scene I mean. Instantly. It’s hard to picture another actress who would even consent to play such a scene, and\/or do it the way she did it.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s hard to find interviews with her. You have to dig deep. I came across this clip of an interview she gave in 1969, where she spoke about working with Vischonti, Bergman, Alain Resnais – their different styles and approaches. She’s riveting. If you don’t speak French, just turn on closed captioning. <\/p>\n

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