Monika et le désir

Sommaren med Monika, often translated as Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl, but directly it is Summer with Monika, I prefer the latter. Summer with Monika is Ingmar Bergman's early masterful classic. It's European modernism and as many of Bergman's films of that era, this film too dealt with social issues. Even that Ingmar Bergman himself was from a bourgeois family, Summer with Monika builds around the working class. It's a story about two youngsters who fall in love and start living a life of their own.

Monika is a minor girl who doesn't get along with her parents. Her only escape from the harsh family life is romantic cinema and her boyfriend, Harry. In result of the distressing life Monika and Harry escape the city to archipelago for the summer. When the summer's over and they come back, the love between them starts to fade.

I have yet not seen as strong film about young parenthood as this. It shows the truth in a very realistic light, Bergman doesn't add any glamor to its characters' lives, which he never does. This is the social theme of Summer with Monika, young parenthood and the subject is still very current, which makes the film timeless. No director of today has succeed in making as good description of the life like that.

Summer with Monika is so beautifully made that it delights you. The plot also has some points that delight the audience, but I was mostly touched by the beauty of the narrative and cinematography. Both of these are clearly European modernism in Summer with Monika. The camera goes behind the reality, it shows the true emotions of the characters. A very impressive scene of the film is when Monika watches directly to the camera. This shocking destruction of the fourth wall and the illusion of cinema, was probably the first one ever made. My information of this is not accurate or reliable, but at least Summer with Monika was one of the first ones, that did this.

A very powerful film of love, youth, parenthood, frustration and life.

It is a very sensitive and solid story about love and loss. It fascinates you from the beginning, first of all because of the beauty of the images and then by the credibility of the characters. There's also plenty of small human details which together make a whole masterpiece (The moment that Monika turns and stares to the camera is one of them). Strangely enough, this movie is never mentioned among the best made by Bergman. But it is a great movie.

He wasn't always the old glum maestro. Although the young lovers in "Summer with Monika" might have fitted quite easily into a British Kitchen Sink film, this early Bergman is less grim than we later came to expect and although minor, this film has much to admire; it actually reminded me a bit of "A Kind of Loving".

A young Harriet Andersson is Monika and Lars Ekborg is Harry, the boy who loves her enough to want to spend a lot longer than just the summer with her. You might say that for Bergman this is a very simple picture filled with very simple people but Bergman treats them with a fair degree of sympathy. Monika may be just a little tart or simply a young woman trapped in an early marriage while Harry is always seen as trying to do the decent thing and the ending, if not exactly upbeat, is less of a Bergman downer than usual. No masterpiece, then, but an essential part of the canon nevertheless.

Ingmar Bergman's Monika (Summer with Monika) (1953) is the story of two Stockholm teenagers, stock boy Harry (Lars Ekborg) and voluptuous, impulsive Monika (Harriet Andersson), who meet and fall in love and run away for a summer on a motorboat on the Stockholm archipelago escaping from work and all responsibility. Monika becomes pregnant and they return to the city and marry – but things turn bad. This first powerful feature by the Swedish master is simple and sweet but nonetheless rich in emotional wrenching events. The film, which depicts teenage unwed sex, was shockingly sensual for its time. In 2006 the intensity of Harriet Andersson's uninhibited performance is still impressive and this story is just as heartbreaking as it was over half a century ago.

Presented as part of the Janus Films sidebar of the 2006 New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center in another gorgeous pristine-looking new print with a rich black and white tonal range that may look better than the original did.

Monika feels trapped, in despair, her future is bleak and laid bare, she needs to break free, escape, run and flee, with a boy who is willing to care.

Harry is a boy that can care, spends his days wishing he was elsewhere, now he's met a nice girl, and they're off for a whirl, a summer like no other can compare.

To love, through a long hot summer, without a care or a bother, just to be in the arms of each other, to smother, enrapture and cover - what could possibly go wrong! Monika and Harry find the inevitable fork in the road, where habit and repetition branch from joy and satisfaction, and sacrifice will not recompense or suffice, at least for one.

Contains that look that says it all.