Hedda Gabler Assignment – Hailey Egan

For me personally, I enjoy seeing pieces of work come to life on screen because it often times gives me a much better understanding of things I may not have picked up on as much while reading it. After reading the written version of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and then watching the film by Bergman, I thought the film did a good job of portraying the characters and the different situations that were described within the written version. I enjoyed seeing the way that the characters were brought to life in the film version because it gave me a better understanding of who they are. It’s obvious very early on that both the film and the written version portray Hedda Gabler the same way. Hedda is bad tempered and she is in no way remorseful for the way she acts or for her rudeness. Her disposition remains an obvious theme in both versions. She has a bit of a god-complex and believes that she is superior to other people. Since she is the daughter of a very well known General Gabler, she becomes used to people showing her respect and obeying what she wants, which is one of the reasons she thinks so highly of herself. She not only is disrespectful to other people, she acts the same way towards her husband even though he refuses to acknowledge the issues that they have. Despite the fact that she is married to George Tessman, she is unwilling to take his last name and still goes by Hedda Gabler which is another example of how she treats and views her husband. While her personality was portrayed correctly for the most part, I do believe it was somewhere exaggerated how she treats Aunt Julie. I think it was less drastic in the written version.

Another thing I noticed that the pace of the film was much quicker than the read because some of the scenes and dialogues weren’t included in the film version, which is common when a piece of writing is created into film.