Ingrid Bergman & Charles Boyer

The screen collaborations of Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman were few. There were only three. Their very last appearance together, A Matter of Time (1976), is remarkable, among other reasons, for being not only Mr. Boyer’s final bow before the camera, but a very brief one (this particular movie is also director Vincent Minnelli’s finale to film making). Also remarkable is that A Matter of Time comes nearly 30 years after Ms. Bergman and Mr. Boyer teamed in Arch of Triumph (1948), their second screen collaboration. Two years earlier, they appeared together in their first and perhaps best-known joint effort: Gaslight (1944). In each of their collaborations, their screen personae, while powerfully magnetic, seemed beset by doom, which may explain why there was not much public clamoring or private yearning for more. Personal choices in life and career after 1948 (Ingrid Bergman’s 7-year exile from Hollywood, Mr. Boyer increasingly portraying himself on screen as a comedic caricature of his former romantic persona) may also account for the dearth of vehicles in which the two would collaborate.

Contrary to his screen image that often cast him as the suave, debonair and consummate lover, Charles Boyer thought of himself as bookish and more likely to be a “stick in the mud” than otherwise. But in keeping with the multiple parts he played as a kind of great lover, his final act in life can be interpreted as an example of great passion. Inconsolable when his wife, Pat Paterson, died August 24, 1978, he took his own life two days later as one last measure of devotion to a marriage that had lasted more than 44 years.