Summer Interlude (1951)
(Sommarlek)
Country: SV
Technical: bw 96m
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Georg Funkquist, Stig Olin
Synopsis:
Impervious to the attentions of a journalist, a ballerina's memory is triggered by a diary to recall a summer thirteen years previously, when she fell in love with a local lad while staying with her aunt and embittered uncle. It is he who has sent her the diary...
Review:
Although shot through with the jaundiced view of the world and its pleasures shared by many of his characters, Bergman's first 'summer' film is notable for having at its centre a particularly sweet and charming love affair, in which the parties do not seek to do each other emotional harm! All the better to have tragedy waiting in the wings, of course, and the film is another to feature artistes, and in particular those devoted to classical music, like its predecessor, To Joy. Here, though, mediocrity is not the fear, but rather is the removal of the mask that provides another wall between the individual's inner fragility and the painful knocks of the outside world. Nilsson is quite simply stunning in the leading role, her face, not unlike Harriet Andersson's, a parchment on which can be read every passing nuance the director has in mind. Gunnar Fischer provides shots of crystalline beauty, or nocturnal moment such as are only found at those latitudes. As a whole, though, the film has some unclear sequencing in its use of flashback, and the antipathy between niece and uncle in the present sections is never quite explained; the upbeat ending seems also somewhat contrived.
(Sommarlek)
Country: SV
Technical: bw 96m
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Georg Funkquist, Stig Olin
Synopsis:
Impervious to the attentions of a journalist, a ballerina's memory is triggered by a diary to recall a summer thirteen years previously, when she fell in love with a local lad while staying with her aunt and embittered uncle. It is he who has sent her the diary...
Review:
Although shot through with the jaundiced view of the world and its pleasures shared by many of his characters, Bergman's first 'summer' film is notable for having at its centre a particularly sweet and charming love affair, in which the parties do not seek to do each other emotional harm! All the better to have tragedy waiting in the wings, of course, and the film is another to feature artistes, and in particular those devoted to classical music, like its predecessor, To Joy. Here, though, mediocrity is not the fear, but rather is the removal of the mask that provides another wall between the individual's inner fragility and the painful knocks of the outside world. Nilsson is quite simply stunning in the leading role, her face, not unlike Harriet Andersson's, a parchment on which can be read every passing nuance the director has in mind. Gunnar Fischer provides shots of crystalline beauty, or nocturnal moment such as are only found at those latitudes. As a whole, though, the film has some unclear sequencing in its use of flashback, and the antipathy between niece and uncle in the present sections is never quite explained; the upbeat ending seems also somewhat contrived.
(Sommarlek)
Country: SV
Technical: bw 96m
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Georg Funkquist, Stig Olin
Synopsis:
Impervious to the attentions of a journalist, a ballerina's memory is triggered by a diary to recall a summer thirteen years previously, when she fell in love with a local lad while staying with her aunt and embittered uncle. It is he who has sent her the diary...
Review:
Although shot through with the jaundiced view of the world and its pleasures shared by many of his characters, Bergman's first 'summer' film is notable for having at its centre a particularly sweet and charming love affair, in which the parties do not seek to do each other emotional harm! All the better to have tragedy waiting in the wings, of course, and the film is another to feature artistes, and in particular those devoted to classical music, like its predecessor, To Joy. Here, though, mediocrity is not the fear, but rather is the removal of the mask that provides another wall between the individual's inner fragility and the painful knocks of the outside world. Nilsson is quite simply stunning in the leading role, her face, not unlike Harriet Andersson's, a parchment on which can be read every passing nuance the director has in mind. Gunnar Fischer provides shots of crystalline beauty, or nocturnal moment such as are only found at those latitudes. As a whole, though, the film has some unclear sequencing in its use of flashback, and the antipathy between niece and uncle in the present sections is never quite explained; the upbeat ending seems also somewhat contrived.