1982: The Overlooked -- SANDAHL BERGMAN in Conan the Barbarian

SANDAHL BERGMAN in Conan the Barbarian

I love swashbucklers. Knights, highwaymen, pirates, desert warriors and Vikings too. So I was right on board with the mini-boom of sword and sorcery films that popped up in the early 80’s. The cycle petered out quickly. But it sowed the seeds that sprouted up a decade or so later with Xena. And let’s face it. This kind of picture’s never really going to disappear. There’s just too much potential for exotic fun, high adventure and sweeping spectacle. Sometimes the women in these films function on a purely decorative level. But the genre’s been known to accommodate some feisty, full-blooded heroines, too. Maureen O’Hara could parry and thrust with the best of them. And Lucy Lawless put some serious spark in the Dark Ages. But I think the warrior maiden I’m fondest of would have to be the marvelous Sandahl Bergman. She had the good fortune to appear in the best of the sword and sorcery films, “Conan the Barbarian”. But I’d say her participation in the picture is one of the reasons it IS the best.

“Conan” had a lot of other things going for it, too. A substantial budget, for instance. When moneybags Dino De Laurentiis came on board as executive producer, it was clear “Conan” would be travelling first-class. The script (co-written by Oliver Stone, no less) embellished its central quest with imaginative details and picaresque digressions. But it still sustained its forward momentum. There was plenty of scope for action but the narrative passages in between were nicely judged – frequently riding a wave of pulp poetry. John Milius turned out to be an ideal director for the piece, energetic and meticulous. He planned and guided the project like a giant military campaign, communicating his own enthusiasm to colleagues at every level.

I would have bet money that Arnold Schwarzenegger would never make it as a film star. Certainly, in most kinds of swashbucklers, he couldn’t have pulled it off. He’s no Don Juan or Scaramouche. Brocades, plumed hats and courtly speeches are definitely not in his comfort zone. But the role of Conan required a more Cro-Magnon approach. Brute strength and grunting determination were the order of the day. And for these things, Schwarzenegger’s a good fit. Even those thick-eared speech patterns that mark him as something of a Teutonic hillbilly were not inappropriate. Conan doesn’t have that much dialogue anyway. And seeing as the script has him brutalized into a kind of stoic silence during his formative years, it makes sense that, conversationally, he’s a late bloomer. Flowery speeches needn’t come trippingly to the tongue. The role called for neither the pretty nor the prolix. It did, however, demand commitment. Something Schwarzenegger was ready, willing and able to provide.

An awesome work ethic had helped propel him to the top of the body-building world. And he brought the same dedication and focus to his work in “Conan”. He’s really good with the heavy archaic weapons and props, achieving a kind of resolute fluidity one would never have thought possible in him. Schwarzenegger was not a man to be underestimated. He knew how to keep his eye on the prize, an ability that eventually led him to success in some pretty unexpected real-life arenas.

As far as his film career goes, it was the success of “Conan” that gave him movie star credibility with the public. And provided him entrée into other big-budget assignments. “Terminator”, “Total Recall”, “True Lies” – these all came later. But it’s “Conan” that got the juggernaut rolling.

Secondary casting in the film’s effective too. The picture opens explosively with the ambush that destroys Conan’s village and uproots him. The boy wordlessly playing young Conan is no stick figure. He’s expressive and affecting. The actors portraying his parents have only the briefest of opportunities to make an impact. But they concentrate so much charisma, character and intensity into those fleeting moments that their deaths are genuinely wrenching. Max Von Sydow brings a plummy authority to his single scene as a cantankerous king, hamming it up in all the right ways. The over-familiar James Earl Jones, villain of the piece, is given a look so striking – long straight hair and icy blue contacts, nicely augmented with some quirky reptilian moves of his own – that never once do the words “Verizon Wireless” cross your mind.

Terrific and unusual locations combine with spectacular art direction to create a massively believable fantasy world. Check out the pervasive twining motifs adorning the snake cult temples. Not since Alessandro Blasetti’s wild 1941 masterpiece “La Corona di Ferro” had so many mythic visual/cultural elements been mixed into such a dizzy and satisfying swirl. The physical solidity of the whole production reverberates with the ringing clang of hammer on anvil. That’s reflected in Basil Poledouris’ rousing neo-barbaric score, too. All resounding brass and thundering timpani. He occasionally borrows from the choral style of “Carmina Burana” – totally appropriate here. Elsewhere he daubs the landcape with a mix of primal colors and elegant pastels. Enriching and enhancing an already heady experience.

Conan’s adventurous arc gets underway quickly. Forty minutes in, it’s already clear the film’s a winner. Then everything’s kicked up a notch. Because that’s when Sandahl Bergman gets swept into the story. Conan and a sidekick have embarked on a recklessly under-strategized night-time assault on one of the snake cult’s crazy temple/towers. The goals – vengeance, theft of a fabulous jewel and maybe just a little general hell-raising. That’s when they run smack dab into solo brigand Valeria (Bergman) who’s apparently staging her own larcenous attack on the tower. She emerges from behind a pillar. A striking presence. Alert. Lithe. A blonde beauty – but no pampered princess or runway cutie. Bergman’s background was in dance (She’d turned a few heads with a flashy solo in Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” a couple of years before). And she sizzles with energy and cat-like grace. Her face has a frank, gutsy beauty – straight planes, an almost Quaker-ish simplicity. But the eyes are vigilant … searching. There’s a bruised, lived-in quality in her. She’s someone who’s emerged from experience like tempered steel. Robust, self-reliant, down-to-earth. So many impressions are conveyed – yet, at bottom, she’s a mystery woman. The credits identify her as Valeria but her name’s never actually spoken onscreen. Her origins, her backstory remain shrouded. Still, there’s no doubt that, like Conan, there’s derring-do in her past. And that, like him, she’s the pilot of her own destiny. Now, suddenly – fully engaged in rival robbery operations – the two come face to face.

Decisions have to be taken instantaneously on both sides. Pros and cons are weighed in a heartbeat. Valeria’s actually a little better equipped for the caper. She knows about the inner workings of the tower. Conan can profit from her knowledge. She can use the extra brawn. Without actually articulating it, they join forces. Swiftness is all-important – and Valeria’s participation proves essential in pulling off the heist. Like Schwarzenegger, Bergman had obviously committed to the fight training. But her aptitude’s even greater than his. It’s one of the film’s joys to see her grace and urgency of movement applied to some really breathtaking fight choreography and swordsmanship.

Once inside, they overcome a horde of bad guys, battle a spectacular (non CG) giant snake and snatch the jewel. The whole sequence rattles along with crackling panache. They’re off – with the enraged snake cultists in hot pursuit. And now they’re a team. A montage – and now they’re lovers. And, what do you know, it’s convincing. The movie really does capture the exhilarating feeling of lives led separately. colliding suddenly in the night and changing forever. There’s scarcely time to breathe and the adventure hurtles on. But now there’s a new equation – constellations have re-aligned, the earth’s axis has shifted.

Longtime loner Valeria makes a big decision, lets down her guard and decides to tell Conan she’s ready for commitment. This is the moment when Bergman consolidates her claim to screen glory – in a beautiful heartfelt speech. No Actors’ Studio veteran could invest the words with more intensity or sincerity than Bergman does in her stripped-down, emotional delivery. It’s to the bone.

“I have never had so much as now.
All my life I’ve been alone.
Many times I’ve faced my death with no one to know.
I would look into the huts and the tents of others in the coldest dark.
And I would see figures holding each other in the night.
But I always passed by.
You and I have warmth.
That’s so hard to find in this world.
Please let someone else pass by in the night.”

Conan, obsessively dedicated to his quest and reluctant to put Valeria in danger, slips away in the night, leaving her behind. Bergman’s out of the picture for a long stretch now, that absence underlining her status as a supporting rather than leading player in the film. But just as Conan’s about to expire from an especially imaginative crucifixion, she returns in the nick of time to save him. And you can imagine a theatre full of kids erupting with thunderous hoots and hollers. The cavalry’s arrived! She literally wills him back to life with a pledge to the gods that seals her own fate.

She builds on the effect of her previous speech with another one, so embedded in her role that every line sounds as if her life depends on it.

“If I were dead and you were still fighting for life
I’d come back from the darkness
Back from the pit of Hell
And fight by your side.”

Valeria dies – and Conan tends her funeral pyre. But return she does – in spectral form and shining armour – to save him one more time. In the end, Conan walks ambiguously into the sunset with a sexy princess, her rescue a side-effect of his adventurous quest. But it’s clear she could never be more than a consolation prize next to Valeria, the stalwart, shining (yet utterly real) Superwoman embodied by Sandahl Bergman.

This memorable appearance seemed to forecast a long and interesting career to come. For whatever reasons, it never materialized. I remember excitedly setting out to see her in a 1982 version of Rider Haggard’s “She”. I’d always loved the book – movies had never done right by it. And of course I was sky-high on Bergman, post-Conan.. What a disappointment! A tattered quickie that chose to relocate the story to a post-apocalyptic (i.e. no budget) setting, then just kept the camera rolling, untended. It came across like one of those reality show challenges (“You have $500 and 48 hours to make a full-length adventure movie in the city dump. Your time starts now.”). It’s a set-up that would have defeated the combined resources of the entire Redgrave family. In the circumstances, all Bergman could do was grit her teeth and get through it. A couple of years later she turned up in the “Conan”-ish “Red Sonja”. It at least represented a return to mainstream moviemaking. Purportedly, Bergman turned down the title role, choosing instead to play the villainess. It may have seemed a good decision on paper. But the results were less than gratifying. Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed under-invested in his role, probably recognizing it correctly as not a milestone – but a minor hiccup – in his march to success. The talents of leading lady Brigitte Nielsen began and ended with swordplay. And she soon settled for brief tabloid notoriety and, eventually, a particularly tacky residence on “The Surreal Life”.

As for Bergman (brunette this time out), she lacked the villainous flair of, say, Faye Dunaway. The clearwater tones she’d used to project Valeria’s forthrightness seemed inappropriate. The wicked queen needed deeper, more insidious bottom notes and a much more theatrical flourish. Perhaps Bergman had simply made too indelible an impression as the heroic Valeria to ever truly convince as a bad apple. Some action fans say she’s good in “Hell Comes to Frogtown” with wrestler Roddy Piper. The title’s always been enough to keep me away. But, then, I wasn’t aware till recently that Bergman was even in it. So. you know, I may investigate it – just to spend a little more time with her.

Academy members had their noses in the air when they ignored Bergman’s Valeria at nomination time. But in my own personal alternate universe, she stands as one of the great fantasy film creations – superb role model, fierce fighter, the loyal friend we’d all love to have watching our backs and – no doubt about it – one of the five supporting actress nominees of 1982.