'The Touch,' directed by Ingmar Bergman, tonight at the Billy Wilder Theater

"The Touch" is Ingmar Bergman's orphan film.

The celebrated, late Swedish director's only project in English, it's a gut-wrenching relationship drama from 1971 starring Elliott Gould, who was as hot then as the entire cast of "Twilight" is now, and frequent collaborators Bibi Andersson and Max Von Sydow.

Before its premiere in Sweden, the movie had a disastrous reception at the Berlin Film Festival and was dismissed internationally by critics and audiences. One Swedish critic remarked that it was "a shallow and banal film."

Gould, now 70, believes it's a masterpiece. Still, he adds, "for whatever reason, and that was Ingmar's prerogative, way after the fact in his autobiography 'The Magic Lantern,' he dismisses the picture. I think it possibly was somewhat of an embarrassment to him in relation to letting another world come in that couldn't care less about how brilliant he is."

Recently, Gould gave his 35-millimeter print of "The Touch" to the UCLA Film & Television Archive, as well as scrapbooks Bergman made for Gould that chronicle the film's production.

Tonight, UCLA will screen the print at the Billy Wilder Theater, and Gould will discuss the film with "L.A. Confidential" writer-director Curtis Hanson, who is chairman of the archive.

"The Touch" casts Gould as David Kovac, a charming but deeply flawed and complex Jewish American archaeologist working on the excavation of a wooden Madonna at a church in a small Swedish town.

Andersson plays Karin, housewife to a surgeon (Von Sydow) and mother of two who enters into a heated relationship with the often volatile Kovac, a man with many mood swings who is not above slapping Karin when he is in one of his deep rages.

Hanson didn't see "The Touch" when it was released. "It has been unavailable for a long, long time," he says. "I am very excited about the evening. Whether it is a lesser work or not, it is a chance to see a movie from one of the great filmmakers and see it on the big screen.

At the time of "The Touch," Gould was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, bouncing from one hit to another. They included "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," for which he received a supporting actor Oscar nomination, "MASH" and "Getting Straight."

"He was tortured, scruffy, neurotic, awkward and fun to watch be smart," Hanson says of Gould.

"Elliott was such an unusual star in the obvious ways -- kind of representing that time, coming out of the 1960s. He was a new kind of movie star."

And directors like Paul Mazursky, Richard Rush and Robert Altman gravitated toward him.

"The Touch," though, signaled the end of Gould's reign in Hollywood

"Ingmar said to me 2 1/2 weeks into principal photography that 'You have gone beyond your limits. You have to live more to understand what you have done.' "

Returning home after finishing the film, Gould admits, "I didn't have the strength or the intelligence to stop working."

Gould began work on a film he was also producing called "A Glimpse of Tiger."

Problems erupted quickly on the set in New York, with reports circulating that Gould was abusing drugs and having a nervous breakdown. Production was shut down, and the film resurfaced later as one of his ex-wife Barbra Streisand's most popular films, "What's Up, Doc?"

The actor says the reports were untrue. "I was unwilling and incapable of compromise," he says.

In hindsight, he admits it was unprofessional of him not to finish the film. His behavior made him poison in Hollywood.

"It took me a while before I got back to work," he says. "Faster than you could snap your fingers, there was no work for me."

King is a Times staff writer.

susan.king@latimes.com