Summer Interlude (1951)

So much average

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

For those who first discovered Ingmar Bergman's work through the internationally acclaimed masterpieces of the late 1950s, there can be a reluctance to go too far back in time before that. After all, weren't the Swedish director's earliest films journeyman efforts where he did not have much control over the filmmaking process, and he had not yet found his distinct style? I, at any rate, get a feeling like this from his 1952 picture "Summer with Monika". I was delighted however, to find that the even earlier "Summer Interlude" to be a strong film. While shot in 1950, it fully anticipates Bergman's mature career.As the film opens we are introduced to Marie (Maj-Britt Nilsson), a successful ballerina in Stockholm who is however visibly unsatisfied and emotionally distant from those around her. As she takes a ferry out to the Stockholm archipelago, the film switches into flashback mode and we learn the whole story of what made her what she is. Thirteen years before, while still a student and on summer holiday at the family cottage, she had a brief fling with Henrik (Birger Malmsten). This was a romantic -- and very nearly sexual -- awakening for them both, and Bergman depicts it with all the wistfulness of an adult looking back on the heady days of youth, just like the film's protagonist. Yet summer does not last forever, and events move in a direction that prevents the two from staying together.As I said, this is already mature Bergman in some of its concerns: belief in God and dissatisfaction at God's silence, interpersonal relationships and the feeling that people wear a mask when dealing with others, and of course the fleeting nature of the bright and warm Nordic summer. I will not however call this one of Bergman's very greatest films. The ending, after we return to the present day from the flashback, feels wrong somehow, the rhythm suddenly jarring and Bergman's point inchoate.Yet overall this is a satisfying picture to sit through, and there are many details to appreciate. Nilsson's acting is ultra-coquettish, and the sexual frankness on display here is surprising; this is in fact more daring than "Summer with Monika", a film with a wider such reputation internationally. The supporting roles by Georg Funkquist and Renée Björling as middle-aged friends of Marie's family lend the film more depth; their failed marriage is a moving counterpoint to the heady passion of the young lovers.

"Summer Interlude" is an exquisitely filmed movie. While it is in black & white, the cinematography and way the shots are framed is just striking and make the film well worth seeing. As for the movie itself, it's pretty much what most would expect from an Ingmar Bergman film....something that leaves you depressed and feeling that life has no meaning!!The film begins with Marie a veteran ballerina. When she receives an old diary, she begins to think back to her youth and her doomed relationship with an ultra-serious young man, Henrik. You see them enjoying each other and looking to the future...all the while you KNOW it cannot end well....and it doesn't. By the end, Marie has said that he hates God, that life has no meaning and she's essentially waiting to die...all a bit much for a 28 year-old woman.The overall film is naturally unpleasant. It has lovely moments but considering how it all plays out...well, let's just say it's NOT a movie that the clinically depressed should watch!! Worth seeing but not among Bergman's very best--mostly because although the film is shot so wonderfully, it's existential angst is tough to watch AND it made me laugh in the flashback scenes at a nearly 30 year-old actress is playing a girl of only 15!

This Ingmar Bergman's earlier essay is a dedicative recount of a young ballerina's summer holiday puppy romance with a timid college student which culminated in a tragic accident and the narrative leaps between the reminiscent past and the present (13 years later, when she is preparing her SWAN LAKE premier). The film is slightly differentiated from Bergman's usual philosophy-heavy, mentally- straining members of his reservoir, a summer vacation in a Scandinavian island, with youth in bathing suits, is a curio to find out. But the die-hard Bergman fans will as always revel in the solemn nuances and formidable expressions from Maj-Britt Nilsson's heroine, whose god-spitting manifesto "I'll hate him till the day I die!"defies any compromise and detour, which could also be Bergman's mouthpiece speaking. There are many aesthetically haunting shots with utterly perfect structural deployment (which cannot be a surprise since this is the sixth Bergman's film I have watched so far), a witchcraft of radiating the characters' frank and inherent emotion and sixth senses through Black & White lens, the portrait close-ups, the little cartoon on the letter, even the ballet tableaux, all sparkle with resilience of a human soul's elusive fickleness. The wild strawberry, chess playing with the clergyman and the hag with mustache, there are many anecdotes here just for perusing. Ms. Nilsson captures all the spotlight in the film, although she and Birger Malmsten are quite awkward in pulling off mid-or-late teens in love since wrinkles and creases cannot lie, but it is almost a mission-impossible for any actress since spanning 13 years especially from teenage to adulthood is a great challenge, nevertheless, this blemish can not overthrow the film's majestic study on a psychological case of a lost love soul's selective protection and rejuvenation, although may not be Bergman's best, still a recommendable film from the maestro and furthermore attests his consistency in filmic supremacy.

While waiting for the night rehearsal of the ballet Swan Lake, the lonely twenty-eight year-old ballerina Marie (Maj-Britt Nilsson) receives a diary through the mail. She travels by ferry to an island nearby Stockholm, where she recalls her first love Henrik (Birger Malmsten). Thirteen years ago, while traveling to spend her summer vacation with her aunt Elisabeth (Renée Björling) and her uncle Erland (Georg Funkquist), Marie meets Henrik in the ferry and sooner they fall in love for each other. They spend summer vacation together when a tragedy separates them and Marie builds a wall affecting her sentimental life."Sommarlek" is a simple little film of the great director Ingmar Bergman in the beginning of his successful career. The plot discloses through flashbacks a tragic and timeless love story affecting the life of the lead character that builds a wall to protect her sentiments and loses her innocence with her corrupt uncle. The cinematography, landscapes, sceneries and camera work are awesome, using magnificent locations and unusual angles to shot the movie. Maj-Britt Nilsson and Birger Malmsten have great performances in this beautiful and melancholic film. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Juventude" ("Youth")