Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

bkoganbing For her first American film, David O. Selznick was taking no chances with his Swedish import Ingrid Bergman. Her debut film was to something she had previously done in Sweden, giving her a role she had already done and was comfortable while presumably she learned English. As we all know Ingrid Bergman learned it quite well indeed.Intermezzo is the story of a world famous concert violinist played by Leslie Howard who comes home from a world tour with his piano accompanist John Halliday to wife Edna Best and children Ann Todd and Douglas Scott. By a stroke of coincidence Ann Todd's piano teacher Ingrid Bergman is also Halliday's pupil. At a party Bergman plays and Howard picks up the violin to accompany her.That's it for him, the beautiful music they make together kindles a romance. She goes on tour with him and it's a romantic idyll. Except of course for Best and the kids.This version of Intermezzo is a faithful remake of the original Swedish film and the reviews that Ingrid Bergman garnered insured her American stardom. This was a busy years for Leslie Howard and David O. Selznick with both of them also involved with Gone With The Wind.The theme from Intermezzo is most often done as an instrumental, but words were actually written for it and Tony Martin made a hit record of it at the time film was out in theater.Seen today Intermezzo and its romantic story hold up well today. Bergman and Best are at their best fighting for the same man and Leslie Howard's charm still comes through after almost 70 years. Intermezzo got two Oscar nominations for black and white cinematography and film editing, but this was the year of Gone With The Wind.You didn't think David O. Selznick should have taken all the Oscars home from 1939. He grabbed enough of them that year as it was.

preppy-3 A world famous violinist Holgar Brandt (Leslie Howard) falls in love with his child's piano teacher, Anita Hoffman (Ingrid Bergman). The problem is he's married with two children. When he asks Anita to join him on a world tour things start to unravel.Bergman's first English language film (she had done previous ones in Denmark). It's not a deep meaningful film (the story is very familiar) but it is a well-done and very moving love story. Also the movie is only 70 minutes long--it never wears out its welcome and moves along quickly and easily. The acting is all good but Bergman and Howard especially are superb in their roles. They bring their characters to life and make their romance look believable. It does get a little overdone at the end but it still works. A quick, moving romance and Bergman's first American film. What more could you ask for? I give it an 8.

Ed Uyeshima The familiar David O. Selznick gloss is all over this minor 1939 soap opera, most noteworthy as the American film debut of 24-year old Ingrid Bergman. She was brought over from Sweden by Selznick for this melodramatic remake of the 1936 film which brought her great acclaim in her homeland. Her fresh-faced beauty and natural manner are intoxicating as she plays Anita Hoffman, first a piano teacher to the young daughter of renowned violinist Holger Brandt and then his accompanist on a world tour. It's a brief movie, only seventy minutes long, directed by Gregory Ratoff (more famous as the ulcer-ridden producer Max in "All About Eve") focusing on the illicit affair that develops between Anita and Holger.Much of the story has to do with the guilt they both experience in terms of the familial repercussions, and the ending reflects as much. A role away from his Ashley Wilkes in "Gone With the Wind", obviously the more important Selznick movie in production a the time, Leslie Howard plays Holger in his familiar erudite manner. Veteran character actor Cecil Kellaway (later the monsignor in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner") plays the sage maestro who acts as the film's conscience. Scenes often seem strangely truncated to move the story briskly along. Beyond Bergman, the most accomplished aspects of the film are Gregg Toland's lush cinematography, Lyle Wheeler's art direction (making Monterey, California look very much like the Italian Riviera) and Max Steiner's romantic music (oddly uncredited). But the impossibly striking Bergman is the primary reason to see this predictably developed film. The 2004 DVD offers no extras.

writers_reign In 1939 Leslie Howard made a meal out of noble suffering and he did it equally well when the budget was a stick of gum as here or when it ran into the young millions as in Gone With The Wind. This is a movie you Want to like not least because it marked the English-speaking debut of Ingrid Bergman who was just as gorgeous at 24 as she remained until her death - trivia buffs may like to know that she played a classical pianist both in this, her first English-speaking film and Autumn Sonata her last film on the big screen which was, of course, shot in Swedish, her native language. With only seventy minutes to play with Gregory Ratoff is prodigal with time; the film opens with violin maestro Howard playing a farewell gig at Carnegie Hall; he then TELLS his audience that he is returning home to Sweden; he is then SHOWN on board ship to Sweden in a scene that adds little to the story and then he Arrives in Sweden. Today, in fact for the last forty years or so, a director would cut from Carnegie Hall directly to Howard at home in Sweden but that's really a minor beef. What we have here is our old friend the 'woman's picture' or 'weepie' and it's strangely disjointed; Ratoff at times seems to be anticipating the New Wave in his abrupt cuts. It's ironic that Bergman made her to all intents and purposes film debut as an adulteress who would play the part for real a decade later when she co-starred with Roberto Rossellini in Life Imitating Art. Perhaps in an effort to sugar the pill the adulterers are depicted as cultured, cultivated people, classical musicians in fact as if that somehow lessens the pain of those left behind and almost adding insult to injury they throw in a scene where Howard's young daughter (Ann E Todd) is so happy to see him when he makes a fleeting visit home that she dashes in front of a car and is badly injured. But relax, folks, this is 1939; we don't do infant mortality and lo and behold if in the final scene long-suffering and saintly wife Edna Best takes him back into the fold no questions asked. A few years ago 20th Century Fox reissued some of their classic films (Laura comes to mind) in truncated versions, a gimmick that failed to catch on and Intermezzo is reminiscent of one of these, its actual seventy minutes feeling more like forty and investing it with an air of Adultery-lite.