Tuesday Minute
No. 108 | June 1, 2010

“Summer” Movies

Our theme this week
“Summer” movies (not soon playing at a theater near you)

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Endless Summer (1966)

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

Ingmar Bergman directed comedies.  (Who knew?)

Bergman had been been making movies for about a decade when he wrote and directed Smiles of a Summer Night, the film that first won him wide international acclaim.  He had already made Summer Interlude (1951) and Summer with Monika (1953), so something about the season seemed to inspire him.  In later years he directed The Virgin Spring (1960), Winter Light (1962), and Autumn Sonata (1978), proving he could make a film for any time of year.

Smiles of a Summer Night may be Bergman at his lightest, though it’s hardly without suffering.  There’s more of that here than you’ll find from other directors aiming for tragedy.  The film is set in the bourgeois society of turn-of-the-century Sweden, with husbands and wives and mistresses and lovers all looking for romance and finding mostly trouble.  The women are scheming and the men full of vanity.  The action culminates in a summer weekend in the country, with eight of them coming together, both friend and foe.  Bergman steers just an inch short of catastrophe, while the women conspire to lead the men through their grand designs, as the couples find the solution to their dilemma by swapping partners.

The cast includes several legends of Swedish acting.  Eva Dahlbeck plays the actress Desirée, the once and would-be lover of Fredrik Egerman, a lawyer, with Gunnar Bjornstrand as the male lead.   Ulla Jacobsson plays Fredrik’s young virgin of a wife, and Harriet Andersson the young and world-wise maid.  One of the highlights of the film is Mrs. Armfeldt, played by Naima Wifstrand, who has one sharp line after another.  When her daughter, Desirée, claims, “For once I was truly innocent,” she replies, “It must have been early in the evening.”

Bergman was a prolific film director and playwright, and along with Smiles of a Summer Night he made a handful of comedies.  This was probably his best known, and sweetest.  (Stephen Sondheim adapted the story for his 1973 musical, A Little Night Music.)  Bergman’s success at Cannes—the film won a prize for “best poetic humor”—helped save his career, which soon would take a different and darker path.

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Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens Leende) (1955)
Ingmar Bergman, director
Eva Dahlbeck, Naima Wifstrand
 

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Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Ingmar Bergman, director

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Quote of Note
Helen:  No decent girl lets a boy kiss and maul her the very first night they meet!  I suppose it’s your Swedish blood in her.  I’ve read about how the Swedes bathe together and—and have trial marriages and free love.  I’ve read all about that.  Anything goes.
Ken:  So, now you hate the Swedes.  How many outlets for your hate do you have, Helen?
—Helen Jorgenson (Constance Ford), Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan), A Summer Place (1959)

…58…59…60.