Summer Interlude (1951)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Film Review

The transience of all good things - love, happiness and life itself - is a prevailing theme in the work of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.  Aside from the human dimension - how we learn to cope with loss and accept our own mortality - there are metaphysical concerns - what kind of God allows beauty to be created and then snuffed out so tragically and so apparently without purpose?  Summer Interlude is the first film in which Bergman shows a profound interest in these issues.  Indeed, it is a kind of manifesto, setting the course for his future filmmaking career, introducing us to the philosophical and psychological themes which would underpin much of his cinema.

Summer Interlude is particularly significant in that it is the film in which Bergman's genius as a cineaste first became evident.  His ten or so previous films showed a promising talent but also a worrying lack of confidence and vision.   Summer Interlude is markedly different to what preceded it - a far more mature, considered film, with more convincing characters, a greater lyrical sense and the most extraordinary photography.

Bergman was fortunate to have as his cinematographer Gunnar Fischer, who had a rare skill for capturing the beauty in nature and rendering it even more alluring in black-and-white photography.  Natural light seems to burn with an unreal intensity, whilst shadows are so stark, so solid, that they have the character of a demonic force - light and shade, like life and death, two opposing sides in a cosmic game of chess.    Fischer worked with Bergman on some of his greatest films, most notably The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

Bergman had originally intended to make Summer Interlude many years earlier, but had to shelve the idea when his first film, Crisis, was judged a failure and he lacked the resources to make the film.  The story derived from a short story that Bergman had written when he was an adolescent, based on his own early romantic experiences.

There are striking similarities with Bergman's earlier film, To Joy (1950), which also recounts a tale of a tragic romance through the device of an extended flashback. Actress Maj-Britt Nilsson plays the female lead in both films, reinforcing the sense of duality (another key Bergman theme).  Summer Interlude is, however, a considerably more sophisticated film, better structured, filmed more imaginatively, and directed with much more flair and confidence.

This is certainly one of Ingmar Bergman's most poetic films, unhampered by the psychological depth and harsh emotional realism that would appear in his later work.  The middle section (recounting the heartrending idyll involving Marie and Henrik) achieves a level of elegiac expression, lightness of touch and simple poignancy that Bergman rarely surpassed, leading one to think that this was one of his most personal films.  As the director himself remarked, he made The Seventh Seal with his head, but he made Summer Interlude with his heart.

Film Synopsis

Marie is a leading ballerina with a ballet company in Stockholm.  One day, she receives a mysterious parcel - an old diary written by Henrik, her first love.  After a frosty exchange with her present boyfriend, she gets on a boat and heads for the archipelago where she spent her happiest summer, more than ten years before.  She calls to mind her first meeting with Henrik, how they became friends and then lovers, and how fate cruelly intervened to separate them forever...