THE BOOK OF THE VIP
DAVE
The genius of Ingrid Bergman
Chapter 43
There will also be a genius called mIngrid Bergman,
2Who will become a great Swedish film director after the war,
3nEven though she will get pretty odepressed about not being able to leave her husband for Humphrey Bogart,
4pWhat with the war and all,
5And so her films will have kind of a qmelancholy flavor,
6But they’ll be incredibly brilliant anyway,
7rBeing all about death and meaninglessness and despair and other brilliant stuff like that.
8sAnd she will do things on screen that nobody was ever brilliant enough to think of before,
9tLike having nobody say anything for hours at a time,
10uAnd picking a bunch of fat ugly Swedish women to be her star,
11Who sigh a lot and say things so softly that you can’t understand them without subtitles,
12Which make things even more confusing,
13Because when you have to read a movie, it seems like it should make some kind of sense,
14Which it won’t,
15vBecause Ingrid will be such a towering genius that none of her movies will ever have a plot,
16Or a happy ending,
17Or be even slightly entertaining in any way at all,
18wWhich is why they will be practically worshiped by intellectuals all over the world,
19Who know great art when they see it,
20Because if something’s entertaining,
21Or intelligible,
22Or ends happily,
23xIt can’t be art,
24Which explains why Ingrid Bergman will be hailed as one of the greatest artists of the whole twentieth century,
25And that’s really saying something,
26Because if there’s one thing the twentieth century will produce a lot of,
27yIt’s art.
✦ · · ✦ · · ✦
Chapter 43 / 58