In the early 1950s, world audiences received a sexual jolt in the form of Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika, which, along with Arne Mattson’s One Summer of Happiness, released a year earlier, convinced them that Sweden was the filmic place to visit for stories about sexually liberated young people. The truth of the matter is that Bergman’s film, in particular, is essentially a critical look at the perils of young love and the harsh consequences that arise from irresponsible romance.
Needless to say, Summer with Monika isn’t specifically a morality tale, given that Bergman never judges his characters or subjects his audiences to didactic methods. These days, the film fails to ignite any sort of forbidden desire because audiences have seen it all.
What remains from this masterpiece is a pervading sense of loss and melancholy. Woody Allen has claimed that, as a teenager, he watched the film in the hopes of having a hormonal release, only to discover, as most people would, that the scenes of exposed flesh are practically inconsequential.
Movies about summer romances have existed since the medium started (summer is also the preferred season of musicians and writers), because there is something almost primal about the way in which the rising temperatures give way to hot bodies combusting against each other. In Sweden, there is something even more specific about the joys of the all-too-brief summer, given the region’s long, cold winters.
In the North, then, summers offer more than vacation time: they are opportunities to feel truly alive. This might be why some of Bergman’s most poignant films take place during the summer (even the summer sequence in Fanny and Alexander (1982) seems to be from a different film altogether).
When filming Summer with Monika, the director told his crew it would be like a summer vacation and a film shoot. The cast and crew left behind the stress of the city and concentrated on shooting the summer sequences near the Stockholm archipelago. During these shots, we see how the title seductress (played by Harriet Andersson) convinces her young boyfriend Harry (Lars Ekborg) to take her away for the summer.
Harry, whom we’ve come to know as a tempered young man, steals his father’s boat and embarks on an idyllic adventure with Monika. The first part of their vacation has them frolicking in the water, making rapturous love whenever and wherever they can, and then retreating to the intimacy of their little home.
When juxtaposed against earlier scenes in which we see Monika’s lack of privacy at her parents’ house and Harry’s cold relationship with his father, the summer sequences take on a lyrical connotation. These aren’t just people in love; these are people who had to carve out their own little private world to escape the harshness of real life. Their scenes together are much like watching two little children play house. This takes on a darker turn when Monika becomes pregnant, and the summer comes to an end.
The couple marries, and it becomes obvious that all Monika ever wanted was to perpetuate the joy of that carefree summer. While Harry decides to find a job and tries hard to support his little family, Monika pretty much forgets about her infant daughter and then proceeds to live a life of decadence and hedonism.
The latter part of Summer with Monika focuses on the heartbroken Harry, and the film closes with a ravishingly beautiful scene as we watch the young man literally age decades before our very eyes. Seen in contrast to the way Bergman rejuvenates the prima ballerina in his Summer Interlude, both parts of the film can be seen as parts of the same diptych: the other, a dreamier side of life; the other, a harsher reality.
Released under the banner of The Criterion Collection, this edition of Summer with Monika features a gorgeous transfer and an introduction by Bergman, who confesses it was one of the first movies he was proud of. An interview with Harriet Andersson touches on key points about how the film’s controversy helped bring mainstream audiences to arthouse films.
Also included is a charming piece about how the movie was released in the United States by the master of exploitation, Kroger Babb, who edited the film until it lost all its melancholy and became a sex drama. Film scholar Eric Schaefer discusses exploitation in detail, noting that at one point it might as well have been the most popular genre in Hollywood.
Rounding out the set is “Images from the Playground”, a curious documentary made from material shot by Bergman, who delightfully says that getting his first movie camera was like realizing he could make moving photographic albums. This half-hour piece gives us a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the master at work and features interviews with Harriet Andersson and Bibi Andersson. A trailer and a booklet of essays complete the DVD set.