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''Summer Interlude'' (), originally titled ''Illicit Interlude'' in the United States, is a 1951 Swedish
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...
co-written and directed by
Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film and theatre director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential film directors of all time, his films have been described as "profoun ...
. The film opened to highly positive reviews from critics.


Plot

Marie (Nilsson) is a successful but emotionally distant prima ballerina in her late twenties. During a problem-filled dress rehearsal day for a production of the ballet '' Swan Lake'' she is unexpectedly sent the diary of her first love, Henrik (Malmsten), a college boy whom she met and fell in love with while visiting her Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Erland's house on a summer vacation thirteen years ago. With the cancellation of the dress rehearsal until the evening, Marie takes a boat across to the island where she met Henrik and remembers their playful and carefree relationship. Three days before the end of that summer 13 years ago, when Henrik is to return to college and Marie to the theatre, Henrik is severely injured after diving from a cliff face and dies. Her Uncle Erland, not actually her relation but a friend and admirer of Marie's mother and now similarly smitten with Marie, takes her away for the winter and helps her to "put up a wall" to lessen the pain of losing her lover and effectively closes her off emotionally. While visiting Erland's house she discovers that it was he who sent the diary to her at the theatre; he has had it ever since the day at the hospital when Henrik died from his injuries. She expresses regret and disgust that she ever allowed Erland to touch her, suggesting that he took advantage of her grief and they had an affair following Henrik's death. Following the evening dress rehearsal, Marie talks with the ballet master, who recognises her single-minded devotion to her dancing and understands her problems, and then to her current lover, a journalist called David, with whom she seems to be in the process of breaking up. Marie decides to let David read Henrik's diary and then open up to him about her past experiences in order to explain her conflicted feelings and emotional coldness. After he has left, she removes her make up and as she does so regains some of her lost youth and innocence, smiling again and pulling faces in the mirror. The film concludes during the successful first performance of the ballet where Marie meets in the wings David, who is now more understanding of Marie's past. She happily kisses him and returns to the stage to finish the ballet.


Cast

* Maj-Britt Nilsson as Marie * Birger Malmsten as Henrik * Alf Kjellin as David Nyström * Annalisa Ericson as Kaj, Ballet Dancer * Georg Funkquist as Uncle Erland * Stig Olin as Ballet Master * Mimi Pollak as Mrs. Calwagen, Henrik's aunt * Renée Björling as Aunt Elisabeth * Gunnar Olsson as The Priest


Production

The film was shot between 3 April and 18 June 1950 with Dalarö as a primary location. The animated sequence was made by Rune Andréasson, who would later become well known in Sweden for the comics and cartoons with '' Bamse''.


Critical response

''Summer Interlude'' received positive reviews by critics. A reviewer from '' Variety'' under the
pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...
'Wing' wrote that the film "represents Swedish film-making at its best," noting the story "is much brighter than ergmanusually does," deviating from Bergman's style which was "usually filled with an influence of the hopelessness. He usually has the actors speaking words which hardly would pass any censorship. But here he tells a simple story in a wholesome way," adding that the film "probably will have no censor trouble and may find a big foreign market." The reviewer also praised Gunnar Fischer's cinematography and the performances by Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjellinin and Mimi Pollak." Stig Almqvist from '' Filmjournalen'' described the filmmaking method as "miraculous", writing that Bergman "belongs to a handful here and there in the world who are now discovering the future articulation of film, and the result can be revolutionary." In July 1958,
Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as ...
wrote in '' Cahiers du Cinéma'', "There are five or six films in the history of the cinema which one wants to review simply by saying, 'It is the most beautiful of films.' Because there can be no higher praise... I love ''Summer Interlude''." The film ranked 8th on Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1958. Pauline Kael from ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' wrote:
Bergman found his style in this film, and it is regarded by cinema historians not only as his breakthrough but also as the beginning of 'a new, great epoch in Swedish films.' Many of the themes (whatever one thinks of them) that Bergman later expanded are here: the artists who have lost their identities, the faces that have become masks, the mirrors that reflect death at work. But this movie, with its rapturous yet ruined love affair, also has a lighter side: an elegiac grace and sweetness.
David Parkinson from ''
Radio Times ''Radio Times'' is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in September 1923 by John Reith, then general manage ...
'' rated the film 4 out of 5 stars, highlighting Maj-Britt Nilsson's performance and the cinematography. He wrote that it "established Ingmar Bergman's international reputation. Although it still deals with the theme of young love that dominated his earliest films, it contains the first inklings of the dramatic intensity and structural complexity that would characterise his more mature work." ''Summer Interlude'' holds a rare 100% rating on
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, and an average score of 7.75/10, based on 11 critics.


References


External links

* * *
''Summer Interlude: Love and Death in the Swedish Summer''
an essay by Peter Cowie at the Criterion Collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Summer Interlude 1951 films 1951 drama films Swedish drama films 1950s Swedish-language films Swedish black-and-white films Films about ballet Films based on works by Ingmar Bergman Films directed by Ingmar Bergman Films with screenplays by Ingmar Bergman Films scored by Erik Nordgren 1950s Swedish films Films based on Swedish short stories