Saratoga Trunk (1945)

Great Film overall

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

This film is in serious need of editing - the first two-thirds or so is BORING and meanders aimlessly. I've never seen Ingrid Bergman chew up the scenery like this, she seemed to be channeling her inner Scarlett O'Hara (and not in a good way). Flora Robson looks ridiculous in black face, surely they could find a black actress??? The only character I liked a lot was the little man Cupidon, he was charming and great comic relief. Florence Bates livens up the proceedings immeasurably near the end, she's always a great character actress. But so much of this movie seems to be a very poor imitation of GWTW. But Ingrid does look lovely. Gary Cooper looks too old for his part. Just my two cents.

One of the worst films Gary Cooper or Ingrid Bergman ever made. What were they thinking with this? I adore Ingrid. She's very high on my list of favorite actresses. But she is absolutely dreadful in this! She overacts and chews scenery like few I've ever seen. Poor miscast Gary Cooper looks like he doesn't know what he got himself into. Don't even get me started on Ingrid's friends -- Flora Robson in blackface and a dwarf. I expected Bela Lugosi and the Bowery Boys to pop up at any minute! The script is cringeworthy. Watching actors you respect say painfully bad lines is not fun. You could tell in some scenes Cooper wished he could be anywhere else but filming this mess. To make a bad movie worse, the darned thing goes on forever. A running time of over two hours in the 1940s was usually reserved for epics. Makes me wonder if WB foolishly thought this was going to be another Gone with the Wind. Anyway, a total dud but fans of these two great movie stars might want to check it out just for curiosity's sake.

I grew up in New York City and every afternoon ABC would show the 4:30 movie- Saratoga Trunk was one of the first movies I remember watching as a kid. I loved this movie and it has stayed with me for years. I recently watched it again and still thought it was great - maybe I am just a romantic - but I thought it was well done. I do not want to say this movie was good only because of the main actors - I really did not know who they were when I first saw this movie - I guess I just knew quality acting as a child. Both Bergman and Cooper were excellent. I especially loved seeing old New Orleans during the time period of this movie . If you ever get a chance to visit New Orleans - you should watch movies that show the city during that time period - when you get to see some of the old homes in the French Quarter(not just Bourbon Street) or uptown, you can truly imagine life as it was 100 years ago. I love old movies - this one to me is a good flick!!

Saratoga Trunk was one of a handful of films done during the World War II years and not released to the general public until the war ended. Warner Brothers was especially big on that, another example would be the Humphrey Bogart/Barbara Stanwyck film The Two Mrs. Carrolls. In the case of Saratoga Trunk though, it had a built in audience guaranteed because of the tremendous hit that director Sam Wood had already done at Paramount with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, For Whom The Bell Tolls. They were such a smash box office hit with the public as a romantic duo that I guess Jack Warner craved a little of what Adolph Zukor was raking in at Paramount.The vehicle for Wood/Cooper/Bergman is the Edna Ferber novel, Saratoga Trunk and I think it proved a bit too long for the screen. If it were done today it would have been a mini-series. In fact the film should have been done as a two parter because it's really two different stories with only the most fragile connection.The first part is Ingrid Bergman and her posse, Flora Robson and Jerry Austin arrive in New Orleans where she is laying claim to the estate of her late father. Mom was a woman of easy virtue and Dad was old New Orleans creole society. She accidentally killed him back in the day. The scandal caused dad's family to see that society shunned her even after her term in prison.Ingrid sets out to make the family pay and they do in many ways. She also meets Texan Gary Cooper while in the Big Easy. He's also out for some payback involving some railroad barons.Both of them make their separate ways to Saratoga, during the 1890s the playground of the rich and famous. Cooper still has his score to settle and Bergman wants to snag a wealthy husband.It might have been far better to treat the New Orleans and the Saratoga incidents as two separate films. Instead Warner Brothers and Sam Wood tried to pack it all in one film and it's over long.Cooper and Bergman still retain the romantic appeal from For Whom The Bells Toll. They got some real good support from dwarf actor Jerry Austin as her faithful Cupidon and Flora Robson made up as a mixed racial Haitian servant. It's blackface yes, but Robson does not play it servile, not by any means.Other good roles here are Florence Bates as the wise society dowager in Saratoga, Curt Bois as the family lawyer for Bergman's Dad's family who she negotiates with for a payoff, John Warburton as the object of her matrimony in Saratoga and Ethel Griffies as his mother. Warburton proves to be something of an unpleasant surprise for Bergman.Bergman has the far showier role as Cleo Dulaine, but Cooper does have his moments. There is a climatic brawl that he's involved in with two factions trying to control a railway trunkline in Saratoga.Well that's where the title comes from. What, did you think it was Ingrid Bergman's baggage?