Bergman - Revisited_Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika) - 1953

Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika) is a 1953 twelfth film by Ingmar Bergman.

The Film surveys the life of a totally irresponsible fellow with his father in the hospital and he chucking his job and eloping with a girl, thinking he has rebelled against the world, spending his time with the girl in isolated places - dreaming - leading a low life and illusive happiness. This is what is comprehended in the beginning.

Afterwards it’s like a nice guy meets a rotten girl story. The female protagonist is depicted as a totally reckless, unstable minded and unlikeable character.

Monika doesn't get along with her parents. Her only escape from the harsh family life is romantic cinema and her boyfriend, Harry. The distressing life of Monika and Harry pushes them to escape the city to “Sweden’s backwaters” during the summer. When the summer's ends and they come back, the love ends. The worldly realism starts to eat into romanticism.

This work deals with love, romance between teens, youth, initial infatuation, abandoning family, teenage unwed sex, young parenthood (which is still a current subject of worry and discussions), hunger, marriage, disillusionment, despair, frustration, abandoning the unplanned child, brutality of life, delirium, reality, boredom and ultimate disaster.

The Film shows the truth in a very realistic light, without any glamour and dramatization.

One of the best amongst many was an incredible scene when Monika gazes at the camera directly, whilst the Big Band Jazz plays in the background, perhaps making it one of the first endeavor by any director to break the 4th wall. The gaze of Monika was full of meaning – the director left it to the viewer to interpret.

By the way, it was after watching Lars Ekborg, the leading actor, one is reminded of the later days Leonardo DiCaprio.


Despite a little bit of nudity, this would be a fantastic film to show the teens who think they know everything and plunges into serious and passionate relationship before they are even psychologically ready.

Bergman - Revisited_Secrets of Women (Swedish: Kvinnors väntan) - 1952

The master of flashbacks – Ingmar Bergman in his 11th movie Secrets of Women (1952) explores Infidelity, boredom, frigidity, extra-maritial affairs, baby out of affairs, persistent unfaithfulness - creating disharmony amongst the couple, a lot of chit-chat about this and that, mostly of weather.

Four Women, Marta, Annette, Karin and Rakel are halting at the family summer house on a Swedish Island with their children and Marta's 17-year-old sister Maj. At some stage in time while waiting for their husbands, Martin, Fredrik, Paul and Eugen, who are all brothers and part of a family firm, to return home from a business trip in Copenhagen, the four women starts to carve up stories about their affairs and relationships which makes a deep impression on Marta's sister Maj, who is in love with Annette and Paul's 22-year-old son Henrik.

Incest?

While the women wait for their husbands in the cottage, the immediate question arises – how close are you to your husband? Or does all marriage ends with Good Morning-Goodbye-Good Night etc without any true intimacy or hearty discussions.

Not a very depressing work of Bergman like his later films

By the way even those days, the Swedes had this ethical notion not to drink and drive !

Bergman - Revisited_ Summer Interlude (Sommarlek-1950)

The 10th Film by Bergman called Summer Interlude (Sommarlek-1950) is a story of lost love, carefree youth, brief teenage love affair, tragic end to the affair and its consequence to future life and sentimental stuff.


There are plenty of wonderful close-ups and shots of Stockholm, old people gossiping about a young woman, lamentations of lost youth and love, the strong fear that youth and life will vanish someday, in the darkness, in the unknown, in the nothingness, getting nostalgic, sorrow and a recollection by the female protagonist on how life goes on with the living while the male protagonist lies dead and decaying. Question again arises on the meaning of life, Such is existence.

For the first time, Bergman introduces us to the character’s view who claims that there is no god. And if there is one, she hates him, she shall hate god until she is dead. If god was in front of her, she would spit on his face. She will hate him all her life. She will never forget. She will hate him for life.

A bit of a contradiction here - If you claim there is no god – you possible can’t hate him – for to do so, you acknowledge his existence.

It is not a philosophy-heavy, mentally-straining analysis about how human being functions film.

Ah, that youthfulness, whiling away the time, picking up wild strawberries, walking around aimlessly, jumping from one small cliff to another, throwing pebbles and small rocks in the sea, stone skipping, rowing away in the summer sun, falling in love – overall doing nothing


It was difficult, awkward and absurd trying to hide all that wrinkles and creases in a flashback from a twenty eight year old woman to fifteen year old young girl

At one stage too much scenes and some of them prolonged, of puppy love, may bore and irritate a serious viewer


The scene where a circle of dark cloud was captured when the young protagonist has an accident in the cliff is astounding. The dark cloud fades to become the face of death.

Some original scores, some scores by Chopin -
* Nocturne No.2 in Eb Major, Op.9
* 12 Etudes Op. 10 No. 12 in C Minor - 'Revolutionary'
filled the void with of course the Waltz from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

Bergman - Revisited_To Joy (Till glädje) - 1950

To Joy (Swedish: Till glädje) is a 1950, 9th Film by Bergman and mainly explores the complicated human relationship especially in marriage coupled with the destructiveness of marriage….

The leading and not a very particularly likeable character is a mediocre violinist and has an incredibly inflated view of his abilities - actually quite unpleasant, self-centered, self-involved, pessimistic, disgusting and neurotic, like most of Bergman's films………. It's when the character starts to communicate that the trouble really begins to brew.


Drunken outbursts, insecurity, hysterical (and in the verge of insanity) protagonist, irritable, silly, crazy and stupid character, the protagonist opines that marriage is both time consuming and nerve-racking, how he hates children and does not want them, questions if the world is good enough to come to and that he would prefer extinction, that even after marriage he feels he is all alone and wants to be left alone, lots of word diarrhea

Somewhere one of the Bergman’s character mentions that there is so much indifference, laxity and misery in body and mind. In the end one doesn’t believe in anything. One thinks that’s how it is. That’s the whole meaning. There has to be a meaning. If there isn’t then one has to make one up. Otherwise one can’t live. Existential crisis.


One can see the influence of Johan August Strindberg, a contemporary of Henrik Ibsen, on Ingmar Bergman.


Classical music was used quite abundantly. Bergman tried to show what happens (while rehearsing) if one plays his own tune in an orchestra - Nothing by chaos surfaces. And when the conductor takes over – music emerges.

The film starts with:

Beethoven’s Symphony 9 in D Minor, Op 125, “Choral” : IV. Presto - Allegro assai - Choral Finale/

In Between :

Egmont, by Beethoven – overture to the tragedy, Op. 84 - pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe/

The Bartered Bride (overture) by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana/

Mozart’s Flute Quartet in A major, K.298/

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, I Allegro molto appassionato/

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, II Andante (C major)/

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, III Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace (E major)/

Mozart’s The Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183, III Menuetto & Trio/

Beethoven’s Symphony No 1 in C Major, Op 21, IV Finale, Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace/ E

And ends again with a repeat of:

Beethoven’s Symphony 9 in D Minor, Op 125, “Choral” : IV. Presto - Allegro assai - Choral Finale.


By the way one would wonder how one of the characters (the conductor) got his thoughts and images across audience, while the leading actor was in a flashback mode?

Bergman - Revisited_‘This Can't Happen Here’ – 1950 (Sånt händer inte här)

‘This Can't Happen Here’ – 1950 (Sånt händer inte här) is somehow an odd, eighth, un-Bergman film throwing in conspiracy, connivance, endeavoring to bump off people, and secret envoys.

No wonder, Ingmar Bergman being a serious man, this film looked like a joke and the title suits the film. Expected much from Bergman – but this was a stupid movie. Period.

Bergman - Revisited_Thirst (Törst) – 1949

Inescapable, difficult and doomed human relationships, the title “Thirst” (Törst - 1949) interprets human being as thirsty for anything which will alleviate his existential restlessness.

Human beings trying to escape the drudgery of existence in brief moments of miserable relationship, with extra marital affairs ending in abortion, frustration from existence, Lesbianism, hysterical women, dominant men, threshold of nervous breakdown and suicide reflects an ongoing pattern of Bergman plunging himself into the hopelessness of life

In the middle of the film we see at last a little bit of joy from Bergman when he displays ‘joie de vivre’ in the theatre whilst the girls dance to old ragtime music. Probably the only piece of radiance so far leading to his 7th film.

Bergman - Revisited_Prison (Fängelse) – 1949

Prison (Swedish: Fängelse) – 1949, by Ingmar Bergman was the 6th Film where he exposes us to an idea that a film can be made on hell; the sentimental and fearful can always look for consolidation in the church; the bored, tired and indifference can commit suicide; the devil will support the people’s interest in religion and the church which anyways has for a long time worked in his interest; life from birth to death is a great work of art – beautiful and terrible at the same time, without mercy and meaning; the devil is nothing but a symbol, reigning in the hell that is earth.

With melancholic scenes, failed romance, forced prostitution, attempted suicides and finally suicide, along with the Studio Lights going off - Prison scrapes through time and mind treating us like rabbits in a magician’s hat.

A message blasts out - "Life Itself is a terminal illness"


A great film with an awesome dream sequence, except a feeling creeps in that the script was heavy and some of the actors were not able to bear the burden of the film.

Bergman - Revisited_Port of Call (1948) (Hamnstad)

The 5th and a claustrophobic film by Bergman - Port of Call (1948) (Hamnstad) immediately delves into the unpleasantness of life, into a suicide attempt caused invariable by depression and the past, the everyday struggle of man for bare essentials, the manipulative-dysfunctional-dominating mother, the familial disconnect, Sardonic thoughts against women and justice, insensitivity of human beings, drunken rampaging rage, the intricacies of human existence, a desire to sail away and to see ‘a lot of things’, working on jobs that you don’t like just to maintain existence, dissenting against social authority, abortion, broken home, correctional house, endeavoring to eliminate loneliness, the pursuit of personal freedom and from loneliness.

Being a loner is not a terrible thing, but feeling lonely is an appalling thing to happen to any human being.


Bergman takes us to his cinematic world, a place where the stresses of the world can be relieved – a medium where the pressures of existence is alleviated