Andy-296 Review of Summer with Monika

Summer with Monika (1953)

Not great Bergman, and dated, but at least it's interesting

[6/10 · 7 January 2011]

In 1950s Sweden, two young working class kids, still in their teens, the reckless and rebellious Monica and the handsome if quiet Harry, decide to elope from their families in his father's boat and have a torrid affair in an island in the Stockholm archipelago during the summer. When she becomes pregnant, the couple has to return to the city and face reality. Harry gets a stable job and strives to become a responsible parent, but Monica rejects the routine of married life, and eventually the responsibilities of motherhood, because, as she says, being young she prefers to have fun. This film was reputedly extremely daring at the time it was filmed (Monica appears in a few scenes partially nude at the beach) but it really seems almost quaint now. One problem is that films dealing with social issues tend to age quickly, much more so than other type of films. Since social mores change, a film portraying a conflict with the social norms of the era that seems daring at the time it is released looks more and more dated once the social norms are changed. The beginning, portraying Monica fighting with her coarse working class family in their crowded apartment and at their grocer's post, seems to belong to a socialist realism movie. Maybe director Ingmar Bergman was at that point too influenced by the Italian films of the time, but it doesn't look a Swedish milieu at all. Harry is portrayed as the more mature of the two, but at times he is also totally irresponsible, like when he decides to elope with Monica at the moment when his father is gravely ill at the hospital (and what happened to him is never said, apparently he died while the couple were at the island). It is said that Monica became an inspiration to many rebellious girls in the 1950s and 1960s, but I found her character unappealing all way through, not terribly physically attractive and also irresponsible, immature, callous, capricious. And there are some really inept scenes in the movie (yes, I know the scenes were directed by Bergman, but I still would called them ineptly filmed) like when he fights the other guy in the beach or when Monica steals a roasted meat to a middle class family. The movie has a great scene though, that seems to belong to a better and more recent movie, when Monica, after she becomes a mother and is dissatisfied with conjugal life with Harry, flirts in a bar with a new lover and suddenly breaks the fourth wall looking straight at the camera with a seducing look. So this is not a great movie in my view, though at least it gives some material for thought.