-------------------------------------------------------------------- Jane Friedman regularly reports on cultural affairs in Israel. By JANE FRIEDMAN TEL AVIV It was May 1981. After several years in retirement and a bout with breast cancer, Ingrid Bergman girded herself for a screen test, her first confrontation with the movie camera in almost four years. Experts were called in to build up her nose, to costume her and to arrange the wisps of coarse gray hair that would transform the grand dame of Hollywood into the late grand dame of Israel, Golda Meir, who served as Prime Minister from February 1969 until her resignation in June 1974 and who died in December 1978. A few minutes before the film began to roll, Miss Bergman admitted she was nervous. ''But,'' she smiled, looking at the camera, ''I see a friend over there.''

The camera has been kind to Miss Bergman. Today, she is in Israel finishing up a four-hour Paramount ''docu-drama'' on the life of the late Mrs. Meir, to be televised as a two-part mini-series in the United States next April. ''A Woman Called Golda,'' which will span Mrs. Meir's life from childhood to retirement and include its public and private aspects, will also star Anne Jackson, Jose Ferrer and the Australians Judy Davis and Jack Thompson in a mixture of documentary and fiction. It will be the first television portrayal of one of this century's most notable women and a suitable vehicle for Miss Bergman. Anwar Sadat, the late Egyptian President, (played by Mr. Ferrer) and the late Moshe Dayan, the former Israeli Defense Minister (played by Yossi Graber), also figure in the script.

Miss Bergman's transformation has been remarkable. Today, she actually looks like Mrs. Meir. She wears those boxy little dresses the late Prime Minister wore, with prim, matching pocketbooks. She walks in Mrs. Meir's ramrod way, her hair pinned up in a tiny bun. She launches those stoic, pained expressions that were Mrs. Meir's trademark. The Israelis who have managed to get a glimpse of the screen star in full costume and makeup agree. Ingrid is Golda.

But while the problem of making the actress resemble the Prime Minister has been conquered, other questions have arisen during the nine-week filming of this $4 million production, the biggest movie project Israel has been host to since ABC-TV's mini-series ''Masada'' in 1979 and an event that has mesmerized the nation.