Bergman

Stockholm, Oct. 18 (Reuters): Film director Ingmar Bergman revealed in a book published today he had a secret love-child in an extra-marital affair in 1959 with a Swedish countess.

Bergman co-authored the book with his newly acknowledged daughter who herself did not know she was Bergman?s child until she was 22. The romance between Bergman and Ingrid von Rosen that began in 1957 caused a scandal as both were married at the time, with Bergman already on his third wife, dancer Gun Grut.

He married again and had an affair with actress Liv Ullman before finally taking Von Rosen as his fifth wife in 1971, saying in the book their decision to marry, breaking up a family with children, met with ?suspicion and even open aggression? in the arts world where he was such a revered figure.

The true paternity of their daughter, Maria, born in 1959, has been kept secret until now. Until she was told he was her father, she thought of Bergman ?with anger? as the man who ?took our mummy from us?.

?Both Ingrid and I were married people. In spring of 1959 our daughter Maria was born. The situation became difficult to manage and Ingrid suffered from a guilty conscience,? writes Bergman in the foreword to the new book, Three Diaries.

The book collects the diary entries of father, mother and daughter in the seven painful months leading up to Ingrid's death of stomach cancer in 1995.

Now living in the solitude of Faro, a tiny island in the Baltic, the Swede regarded as one of the greatest directors in cinema history writes in the book that since Ingrid's death his life?is characterised by a sorrow that doesn't fade?.

Although he points out?Three Diaries? is?not literature?, the stark treatment of anguish and suffering could come from one of his early black-and-white masterpieces like?Winter Light?.

Bergman, who had eight other children including one by Liv Ullman, admits he was a bad father and Maria feels?as if everything were his fault. If only he could die instead?.

Ingrid's jotted entries rarely dwell on her pain but Bergman's entries are raw emotion with rare moments of calm.

Father and daughter react differently to her death. Maria is thankful that?mummy didn't have to suffer at the end? while he sat by her bedside and?cried and shouted, stroked and kissed her. She was still warm. And I thought that she was breathing.?