Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939)

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Ingrid seemed to put a lot of concentration into this story. I love how Leslie plays the role so nonchalantly in the beginning, then all that changes when Ingrid's character performs at the birthday party. The story does seem a bit rushed in spots (I notice the original version is fifteen minutes longer). I think we should've had the scene where he tells the wife he's leaving her. The role of the son is very underdeveloped. But the story is great. You're not supposed to root for the main characters if you're a moral person, and the plot threads are all neatly tidied up when he goes back to the wife in the final scenes. But it leaves you wondering what happened to Ingrid's character. She may have provided an intermezzo for him but there's a sequel in here somewhere. I can't think that these two never met up again. The other thing I want to add here is that I tried to keep in mind that Ingrid had done the entire story before in her native Swedish. Imagine being an English-speaking actor and having to redo your entire performance in another country in another language.

Standard, typical tear-jerker - highly-renowned concerto artist deserts family to take off with his child's piano teacher. They cavort around Europe until she finally throws him out and resumes her music career.The ladies in the audience use up three handkerchiefs apiece with their weeping. The men wonder at the idiot male who gives up the luscious Bergman to return to sleep with his wife who is stupid enough to take him back.The plot is straight out of East Lynne and told dozens of times on stage and in screen. Two star-crossed lovers finally come to their senses when they are reminded about the lives they are ruining with their carrying-ons. So they cry on each others shoulders and go their separate ways. A stinker of a movie.

A cultured and unfussy weepie. Strong leads from Leslie Howard and Ingrid Bergman front a strong cast - right down to the excellent Ann Todd as Howard's young daughter.The story is of a concert violinist who leaves his wife for another woman. Naturally there is quite a bit of music in the film. Great care has been taken to equate the miming with the soundtrack. All the musicians look as if they are really performing, detail typically neglected nowadays. The score itself, despite being the fruit of many hands, is exemplary in its integration with the film: Heinz Provost's titular melody uses the opening phrase of the act 2 love duet of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, showing the long reach of Wagner's fully-integrated musico-dramatic ideas in romantic American film scores more than 50 years after his death.The final sequences are slightly out of kilter. However mitigating against this lumpen denouement are some wonderful location shots and two outstandingly executed leave-taking sequences as Bergman literally dissolves into the chiaroscuro of the shot. A thoroughly affecting and well-made film. 7/10

At 70 minutes, the movie doesn't even seem forced at all, it goes by pretty quickly. My main problem with the movie is that there is no chemistry between Leslie Howard and Ingrid Bergman. Since their relationship is the entire movie, it shouldn't work, but somehow i actually liked it in spite of that. At the start, Bergman is giving piano lessons to Leslie's daughter and when he finds out she's really talented herself, they begin to have an affair. Leslie is separated from his wife and he goes on tour with Bergman. His wife wants a divorce and when she is accepted into some music school, she doesn't want to leave him. Leslie Howard does a good job and Ingrid Bergman is gorgeous.