I sometimes feel like the older I get the more I come to appreciate the cinema of Ingmar Bergman, or maybe it’s just that his customary froideur and austerity is growing on me. (At least, in terms of his filmmaking reputation; the home video excerpts in the Criterion extras show that he was a pretty animated and jaunty fellow.) This early film of his—paired with 1951’s Summer Interlude by the Criterion Collection, though this later film is perhaps his breakthrough in certain respects—is a film of two parts. It is book-ended by kitchen sink dramatics in poky Swedish flats, as young couple Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (Harriet Andersson) hook up and try to make their lives work. He’s a bit of a dullard in a dead-end job, and Monika’s entrance into his life shakes it up enough that he follows her on a summer expedition with his dad’s motorboat. They grow out their hair and go a bit feral in the sun, before settling back down to the old grind.
It’s this summer section that sticks in the mind and really makes the film, and not just because of the promised Swedish naughtiness that helped to sell the film as exploitation fodder in the States (in truth, the nudity is relatively minimal, but there’s a lot of summer sensuality in various ways). I don’t entirely buy Monika’s turn at the film’s end, but she is set up as such a free-spirit that she can’t help but be the focus of every scene she’s in. Bergman has two notable sequences near the end, in which his leads look directly into the camera as the lighting changes to suggest their nostalgic reminiscences, and neither can be said to be truly happy except perhaps in their memories, and perhaps that’s what the film is about. It’s about two characters, one of whom continues to run away from the consequences, and the other who is a bit of a dull wet blanket.
CRITERION EXTRAS:
- The chief extra is the short film Bilder från Lekstugan (Images from the Playground, 2009, dir. Stig Björkman), which edits together a bunch of footage shot by Bergman (and presumably his collaborators, given he’s in some of the shots). It functions essentially as home movie footage from the 1950s, covering the making of a number of his films, including Monika but also Sawdust and Tinsel, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and others. There is doting footage of Anderssons Harriet and Bibi, as well as his other many collaborators, and it somewhat reveals Bergman to be a bit of a joker and a high-spirited lad, quite unlike his cinematic reputation. He does always seem to be sporting a pseud-y beret though, to be fair. Anyway, on the soundtrack are more recent interviews with these women as well as some contemporary archival recollections by Bergman. It has a silent movie style score, and it’s all very lovely.
- All the Criterions seem to have outtake footage from Marie Nyreröd’s feature-length interview Bergman Island, in which the great man sits in his home movie theatre and talks to her about each film before ostentatiously signalling to roll the movie. Here he wistfully reflects, fairly candidly, on his relationship with Harriet Andersson, and it’s interesting to hear how he feels about seeing such a particularly youthful and adolescent expression now that he’s a much older man.
- Harriet Andersson is also interviewed for this release, now elderly of course but still very lucid and playfully discussing Bergman and their relationship with great fondness but keen understanding, as well as the making of the film and the way she worked with her co-star. She is talking to Peter Cowie, who manages to restrain himself from nerding out too much (if that’s the right way to describe him).
- There’s also an interesting short piece talking to film academic Eric Schaefer which contextualises this Bergman film in the history of exploitation cinema in the States, particularly the way it was used by entrepreneur Kroger Babb (who put it out in a heavily-edited version as Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl!).
- Finally, there’s a short Swedish trailer for the film, not quite selling the sexiness as much as the Americans did.
CREDITS
Director/Writer Ingmar Bergman (based on the novel by Per Anders Fogelström); Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer; Starring Harriet Andersson, Lars Ekborg; Length 97 minutes. Seen at home (Blu-ray), Melbourne, Monday 29 April 2023.
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