Really Surprised!

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Marie, the beautiful young ballerina, is near the end of her career. She is sad and alone (often by her own choice). One day a diary appears and she shares with us a summer when happiness finally came and then was taken away. She is such a charismatic character, full of the drive that makes her the master of her craft, and yet fragile as she develops a relationship with a star struck young man who just pops into her life. She is sought after and knows the power she has over men, knowing no fear when it comes to that. She is selfish and protective of her privacy and consumed by her dance (as she should be). There are two tales her. One is the flashback romance of the Summer Interlude and true love. The other is that she must come to grips in some way with the fact that like a mayfly, a ballerina has a short life. When one is through with that role there has to be something else. The last ten minutes of this film are so revealing. We think of Bergman as frightened and cynical at times, presenting life as a chore with little reward. His characters are often pathetic and deep. In this, I think he was at least showing an optimistic being in the face of great tragedy.

Bergman was in his prime and tweaking his virtuoso for his next films thenceforward; this is one of his first movies where he co-write the script and where he interlaced the story with a flashback sequence; as a ballet dancer named "Marie" gets ready for her performance in "Swan Lake" she is greeted with an unexpected parcel... She then peruses a nostalgic pad written from her summer 10 years ago, and is in a conflict with her nostalgia and the tragedy that entails through that nostalgia... This is where the movie shines; it's profoundly stimulating for me to watch a story where it's unfolding through a period where the character seems to be unable to engage with the world, and with the biggest anthropological study of how, we're treated with it through the turning point at a happier time. It's, I'm sure, an overused staple in Drama or Romance today; here, it is used to great avail, and it is the strongest part of the film. She grows deeply in love with Where she says that God is doing a scant job of helping her in her time of need, was deep and very much (as a criticism) pushed; Bergman indulged in his Lutheran Upbringing frequently in his movies; I suppose it was a way of expressing philosophy, to which he thought was the only way he could paint it on this canvas. Unfortunately, here it feels like it was done with a slight reserve She goes in superficial relationship with Hendrick (in the flashback sequence), where only she can be the mirror into the heart. Maria loves Henrick, but really in context I think she's impelled towards him; even though you're given not much context as to how this relationship sparked any dynamic, you're treated to the recklessness that is attributed to the love and all its might.It's deep and transfixing. Also, rather unsettling; it doesn't spark anything memorable about the Ballet Dancer; she's lovelorn and dwells on her past; her Uncle Erland wants her to elope with him, despite the fact that she's already in a relationship; the weird thing is he is so callous that even with the subsequent tragedy, you still feel deep detachment; as a criticism, it is unsettling and really only plays the part of disrupting your psyche; I suppose in conventional Drama, it is a bit less realistic, but even this infatuation is not really directed well so much to the point where the character is involved and this seems like a stitched up emotion, in order to sweep her under the mat.And like "Friday the 13th" (not that this movie is any shape or form related to that; it is trash compared to him) Bergman makes great use of his setting of the water and would do so onward; the sorrows he displays and the insecurity of his characters shun our ideas about the irrationality of relationships, and how we console ourselves with partners to feel important both cognitively and knowingly so.The ending is not very resonant, but I think this was yet another wink at the audience that she becomes ingratiated to another man (A Newspaper Journalist) and now that he knows the truth of what happened to Henrick, she can now throw herself at him as an empathetic person.My favorite part was in the Dressing Room, where the guy talks about the ugly facade created by people and how her absent mindedness, while style obscurely understood, stands for grandest depths of the artistic medium... Bergman really is enamoured to any art, and this is where his canvas would soon manifest in and respectively so.So in conclusion, this is not Bergman's best by a long shot, but it has his emotional elements, it contains enough drama to traverse through and it's a charming nostalgic movie... it doesn't have any significance that any of his later films would have though.

Ingmar Bergman unfolds his 1951 drama, Summer Interlude, under a bleak canopy of the downhearted and disenchanted, an umbrella of gathering doom and gloom as both the summer skies and its respective weather gently gives way to the harsher and colder characteristics of autumn; as the rural locale in which the film is predominantly set becomes barer, less lush and more frightening as things gradually wind down for a longer, greyer haul. The said items greatly compliment a really stark, professionally observed and thoroughly engaging mediation on life and attitudes of old twinned with doomed romance whilst one was younger; a brilliantly played and fascinating in equal right observation of great intimacy on attitudes to life and those around one when one is younger simultaneously exploring that yearning for times gone by. From its frank opening act culminating in a woman deciding to journey out so as to confront both fears and the pain because of something which still resonates, to its closing of the lead peeling certain things away from her as she additionally quite literally reflects into a mirror following a somewhat successful journey, it is a devilishly involving romantic-drama which works brilliantly.The film covers young Marie (Nilsson), a Swedish ballerina whose mind and whose memories make up the bulk of the film's runtime as she ventures out to a more rural part of her country, but only when the hard graft of bringing to life an incarnation of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is temporarily halted. Her decision to do so is inspired by a collection of things she receives in the post, her facial reaction occupying most of the frame as a diegetic alarm bell within the theatre she's working sounds off and acts as a fitting soundtrack overlying the imagery. Once back on the floor following the role-call bell and practising again, the film presents us with what appears to be two or three different soundtracks of internal and external music playing over the images, as these rather dramatic dance procedures are presented to us in a relatively close up format whilst the impact of what was read or discovered barely a scene ago resonates. Post practise, a session brought to a premature end following some technical malfunction with required stage equipment, Marie leaves the building with her journalist boyfriend David (Kjellin).We discover that she has had little time for him recently, the manner in which the production crew drive Marie fresh in our minds; Marie taking this opportunity to bury the proverbial hatchet by temporarily ditching David, as well as everything and everyone else, by leaving the mainland and heading on out to a more secluded rural spot featuring lakes; lake-houses; woods and isolated manor houses. Once there, at this somewhat desolate; cold; murky and rather frightening place, the film will cover events from thirteen years ago when she was barely out of her teenaged years and a love affair-come-friendship with young boy Henrik (Malmsten) doubling up as her first love. The harking back begins with the travelling by boat, each item acting as its own landmark upon which Marie's memory acts on particular cues, and Henrik's admitting to feeling for her through performance or third party spectatorship; specifically, that he has watched her perform many times as a ballerina and has felt how he does through these observations before having even met her.Once at the island during her flashback, the warm weather and summer surroundings make for perfect conditions as she visits an aunt and uncle that live there; the occupying of a small beach house all by herself and prospect of lake swimming and time off greatly alluring. The weather compliments the deliberately romanticised nature of her memories, her attitude to most of those around her flirtatious and adventurous to say the least; her more recent opinions on these things, we come to feel, nothing but regretful. Her bond with Henrik is highly charged in a sexual manner without there ever being much in the way of embrace; a series of energetic altercations and interactions, in what we assume to be the relatively searing heat, seeing the pair of them wear little for most of the time as sessions of swimming in the nearby lake goes hand in hand with the erotic crawling around on all-fours in front of each other on the shore constructing mere games, while, on occasion, Henrik's own glee at eating wild fruit out of Marie's hands is additional content. Inbetween all of this sees the prancing and gallivanting around inspired by Marie's own occupation as a dancer, the very item that is the reason Henrik feels as he does, occurring.Where in the past Marie slept in her bathing costume and woke up with a warm, glowing smile on her face as she leaped out of bed to tear open the curtains and then charge into the water to swim, times change. Where once she was happy as could be and couldn't wait to get started in the mornings during this holiday away, solemn and rueful looks around the locale that has remained the same occupy her lone, statue-like figure as she hurtfully reminisces to herself. The film is a painful mediation, but an honest and enthralling enough study of a young woman eventually coming to accept what has happened and, we feel, come to embrace what it is she currently has in her life. In every regard, it is a superior piece of doomed romance captured elegantly on film.

It's interesting to note that when scripting this film Bergman would not have been much older than his protagonist: the 28 year old Ballet dancer Marie. Marie is someone who has spent the majority of her adult life building a wall around herself, her primary purpose in this is protection against the ghosts of her past. Although, we suspect, the wall may not have fully achieved this aim, it has succeeded in preventing her from truly making contact with the world, and, those who love her from ever reaching her. This is represented physically in the difficulty her young lover (the journalist) has in penetrating the theatre foyer at the beginning of the film. One gets the sense that Marie is doomed to drift through life, forever looking backwards, over her shoulder. When an ex-lover's diary is mysteriously delivered to the theatre she is forced deeper into herself, to confront a past she has locked away for the last fifteen years. We are then presented with these memories that the diary provokes and this is when the film truly comes alive. ALIVE is the key word here as Bergman paints for us, in a way that so few other's are able, a vivid picture of the essence of young life and falling in love for the first time, stomach butterflies and all. Her relationship to Henrik, a older local boy she meets whilst staying with her aunt is depicted expertly in such a way that Bergman's dialogue dances, and his scripting skills truly shine. In this field, he must have been way ahead of many of his contemporaries: their personalities are quickly and efficiently drawn so as to be absolute, their teasing banter is playful, unpredictable and a joy to witness. There is a magical scene in which the two young lovers begin to pencil various characters from their lives upon a record sleeve. Unexpectedly (especially in a Bergman film!) these drawings spring into life re-enacting a comic version of the lives of their real counterparts. In terms of Bergman's filmography these scenes are unique in their lightheartedness. However, this IS a Bergman film and, as surely as autumn and winter must follow summer, the light must be balanced by an equal amount of dark.As in Wild Strawberries, the narrative structure unfolds in a series of flashbacks that masterfully deliver vital information in such an order that ensures their emotional impact. The ballet scenes are of note as they are shot with a beautiful quietude that reflects the understated nature of the whole film. 'Summer Interlude' seems to assert the importance of embracing the here and now, of venturing into the shadows to confront one's ghosts, and laying them to bare in the sun. The alternative, it seems, is not really living. This is not typical Bergman fare, it is not nerve shredding drama on an epic scale, nor is it a challenging psychological abstraction that pushes the medium of cinema. Rather this is a moving little tale of remembered intimacy: small, but perfectly formed.