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Amazon.co.uk Review
The film tells the story of a young couple, Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (18-year-old Harriet Andersson, with whom Bergman would fall in love) stuck in lousy jobs in Stockholm. Harry is beset by parental responsibility--his mother died young and his father is ill--while Monika is fed up with her drunken, violent father. They escape in a motorboat and to spend a blissful summer on an island in the archipelago. Once Monika gets pregnant and they're forced to steal food, however, the idyll concludes and they return to Stockholm, where the relationship disintegrates. You realise that Monika, from a large and fractious family, yearns for escapism, while Harry, who has never known true family life, longs for domestic stability. It is he who is left holding the baby. But Bergman does not quite condemn Monika, giving her one of his best scenes: in a cafe, estranged from Harry, chatting up a stranger, she stares unwaveringly and directly to camera, as if defying us to judge her. Visually ravishing, this film would have a deep impact on French New Wave cinema.
On the DVD: Summer with Monika on disc offers a fine restoration of the original film, and includes notes from Phillip Strick who points out that the film is in part hymn of praise to Stockholm's beauty and was influenced by the documentary "City Symphonies" made during World War II. --David Stubbs
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic early Bergman.,
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This review is from: Summer With Monika [1952] [DVD] (DVD)
Summer with Monika depicts a young couple rebelling against society and their parents (a common theme in much of Bergman's earlier work.) The first part of the film is set in the city of Stockholm, but as Harry and Monika cement their relationship and their resolve to rebel, we move out of the city to the beautiful islands of the archipelago around Stockholm. The depiction of young love in summer is idyllic - but, of course, it can't last... Beautifully shot and constructed, Summer with Monika is a moving and sombre evocation of young love.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A moving tale of love and passing summers,
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This review is from: Summer With Monika [1952] [DVD] (DVD)
I saw this film for the first time a few years back and was moved by how it mirrored so precisely a phase I was going through in my own life. The cinematography is nothing less than outstanding, but it is the subtle things that truely make this a masterpiece. I know other people tend to focus on Bergman's more grandiose works, but this movie shows that the master could also work on a much more intimate and detailed level.
I would recommend this film to anyone that has loved and lost. A moving and deeply personal film.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite Bergman film.,
By Jason Parkes "We're all Frankies'" (Worcester, UK) - See all my reviews (No. 1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)
This review is from: Summer With Monika [1952] [DVD] (DVD)
I know that films like The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Sawdust & Tinsel and Fanny & Alexander are better than this film- but this was the one I saw first. Many people tend to prefer the earlier Summer Interlude, that is similar to this film; but for me this is the one. Based on the novel by Per Anders Fogelstrom, this has the themes and style that many of Bergman's subsequent works would have- a transcendental use of imagery verging on the magic, miserable relations between people and the existential nature of life and the obligatory decay that occurs with time... Harriet Andersson's Monika is not dissimilar to other 'wild women' of the screen- Jeanne Moreau's Catherine in Jules et Jim and Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue sprung to mind. The island holiday between the couple has that idealised quality of youth that people pang for and base whole careers on attempting to recapture- the end shows that change occurs and things can never be the same again. I think this film is where Bergman came of age, and it has, for me, one of the most iconic images I have seen in cinema: Harriet Andersson running naked towards the sea. This is the most perfect image, one of innocence and beauty on a plain removed from the conventional (the beach is often seen as something like a dreamplain, if you're misreading Jung and gazing at Dali at the same time)- this is the moment that Lars Ekborg's character will try to recapture in a Proustian fashion (and fail to). A perfect moment in cinema. It is great that Summer with Monika is now available on DVD, as I believe it to be a classic work and the ideal introduction to the world of Ingmar Bergman.
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