The 1949 movie Ingrid Bergman couldn't stand making

The 'hostile' 1949 movie Ingrid Bergman couldn't stand making: 'How I suffer and loathe every moment' Money has always been a divisive issue in Hollywood, even in its golden age, when some of the most legendary figures in the business were at their peak, icons of the industry like Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman. As the 1940s came to a close, the director of Rebecca and The 39 Steps and the Swedish star of Casablanca were former close friends attempting to make a film but falling out quite spectacularly over pay packets and Hitchcock's working processes. They had worked closely and effectively together on 1946's spy noir Notorious, which had been a massive hit at the box office, and hopes were high for Under Capricorn, a period drama set in Australia in the 1800s, adapted from a novel by Helen Simpson who had written two previous Hitchcock stories. But almost immediately, there were issues. Bergman had visited Hitchcock on the set of the film he had just finished shooting, the 1948 James Stewart thriller Rope, and was shocked at what she found. The British directing legend was doing continuous ten-minute takes, putting huge stress on the crew, and she recalled in a letter at the time: 'This is their second walk out. The camera crew and sound crew are nice. But it is a hostile feeling on the set that just kills you. People hardly look or speak to you'. But there was worse to come. Even though Rope contained a heartfelt if light-hearted nod in the script to Bergman's superb work on Notorious, it wasn't enough to defrost the relationship between her and Hitchcock, which had arisen due to the fact the director was staggered by her demand that her salary be upped to $200k, more than $2million in today's money, plus 25% of the profits. Hitchcock responded by upping his own take home pay, plus a 30% share of the profits, but the damage was done. Although Bergman didn't cite the money as the major issue, there was plenty for her to get upset about. She added, 'Under Capricorn is half finished. The other day I burst. The camera was supposed to follow me around for 11 whole minutes, which meant we had to rehearse a whole day with the walls or furniture falling backwards as the camera went through, and of course that couldn't be done fast enough. So I told Hitch off. How I hate this new technique of his. How I suffer and loathe every moment on the set.' The director, for his part, had already decided while shooting Under Capricorn that it wasn't going to work, and would be a huge flop, a prediction which came true. It meant that neither he nor Bergman saw any share of any profits, because there weren't any. The total box office for the film was just $1.5m, and it had cost more than twice that to make it. It was such a disaster that the company that bankrolled the film repossessed it, and it wouldn't even be seen on television for another 20 years. Quite simply, the public and the critics wanted thrillers from Hitchcock, and Under Capricorn was not that. It also wasn't helped by the fact that the same year the film was released, news broke of Bergman's extramarital affair with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, tanking her popularity.