Audun Engelstad

Selznick, Bergman and the abandoned A Doll’s House

Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway

In the spring of 1947, Hollywood star-producer David O Selznick announced his plans to make a film version of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, with Dorothy McGuire in the lead. Some months later, Selznick approached the Swedish director Alf Sjöberg, who Selznick had been trying to recruit for some time, with an offer to direct A Doll’s House. Sjöberg was no stranger to Ibsen’s work, in fact he had recently directed A Doll’s House for Swedish radio theater. Sjöberg suggested he could bring along his screenwriter from his previous film, Torment (Hets), a young man called Ingmar Bergman.

Today, we can imagine the combination of Selznick, Sjöberg and Bergman would have turned out a sensational film, one way or the other. The film, however, was never produced. When Selznick finally received the script, after a long and anticipated wait, he was disappointed. His first thought was to hire Lillian Hellman for a rewrite. But in the end, the project was abandoned all together.

So what kind of screenplay did Bergman write, and what kind of film did Selznick envision? This paper is based on research at the Bergman archive in Stockholm (where they have a Swedish language copy of the script) and the Harry Ransom Center in Austin where the Selznick files are collected. The paper will present an analysis of the Bergman script, considering casting plans and other production notes found at the HRC. By doing this, I hope to illustrate how Selznick’s vision of a Hollywood melodrama clashed with Bergman’s attempt to make A Doll’s House into a warm family drama with a downbeat ending.

Audun Engelstad has extensive experience with story analysis and narrative theory. His publication includes a book on film narratology, and several journal articles and book chapters on film genres and TV drama. Currently he is embarking on an extensive research project on Ibsen and film, of which this paper is part of.