The Classics Now festival, which celebrates the artistic achievements of the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations through modern reinterpretation, returns to the IFI with this special screening of Journey to Italy, in which the enduringly iconic Ingrid Bergman gives one of her best, most emotionally nuanced performances as a woman facing a marital crisis while in Naples with husband George Sanders, whom she is increasingly estranged from. Bergman’s marriage to Roberto Rossellini, the film’s director, whom she met whilst making Stromboli (1950) and divorced her then husband to be with, caused no little scandal at the time.

Notes by David O’Mahony