Customer Reviews

Summer With Monika (Sommaren med Monika) (Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl) [Region 0]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What started as a story of idyllic summer of love and journey, shared between very young Harry and Monica, became an interesting study of relationship that had to survive the demands of real world after the journey was over.

I kept thinking while watching this film what would've happened to Romeo and Juliet (who were close by age to film's heroes Monica, 17 and Harry, 19) had they been given a chance to live happily ever after. Would they be able to love each other after the reality of marriage would fight with their eternal love, when the baby is crying all night long and there is no money to pay a rent, and young and tender Juliet has learned about power and pleasures of sex but her Romeo is always out working, trying to make enough money to support her and the child? Would Juliet get bored and angry with Romeo for leaving her home alone? Would she start looking for fun elsewhere? Would be Romeo left heartbroken and bitter or would the memories of that unforgettable summer with his Juliet - Monica still stay with him as the best time of his life?

Beautiful film with wonderful Harriet Andersson as a sultry teenager Monica, full of life, rebellious against her boring existence at home, ready for all pleasures of adult life but not ready for responsibilities of a wife and a mother. Will she learn? Will she remember the summer with Harry? Bergman, as usual, does not answer the questions. He never does. He tells the story - we are the ones who are left with unanswered questions.

**** 1953. Co-written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Two teenagers spend the summer in the country after having left their job and their family. When they return to Stockholm, Monika is pregnant and Harry must now find a way to support his family. Two years after Summer Interlude (Sommarlek) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.0 Import - Great Britain ], Ingmar Bergman describes another figure of woman. But if the summer Marie spends with Henrik will leave a lasting souvenir in the youg woman's heart, Monika will soon forget the idyllic weeks spent with Harry and will not bear the prosaic return to the real world. A movie about innocence and responsibility that will leave you hating reality. Once more.

One of the best films of Ingmar Bergman, every penny spent on this movie is worth it. Once seen never forgotten. Story of realistic love, genuinely portrayed on the silver screen. Real visualization of an era gone by.

This movie reminded me of a story that my father once told me about a cousin who deserted her husband and children--a story ending with the assessment "she was just no good!" So it is with the Monika of this tale. One day she is eating mushrooms in the woods with her young and innocent boyfriend--the next day the idyllic spell has been broken. Pregnant--Monika ditches the boy and leaves him with the baby. The next thing you know she is hanging out in bars, enticing men in her slinky dress.

In 1950s Sweden, two young working class kids, still in their teens, the reckless and rebellious Monica and the handsome if quiet Harry, decide to elope from their families in his father's boat and have a torrid affair in an island in the Stockholm archipelago during the summer. When she becomes pregnant, the couple has to return to the city and face reality. Harry gets a stable job and strives to become a responsible parent, but Monica rejects the routine of married life, and eventually the responsibilities of motherhood, because, as she says, being young she prefers to have fun. This film was reputedly extremely daring at the time it was filmed (Monica appears in a few scenes partially nude at the beach) but it really seems almost quaint now. One problem is that films dealing with social issues tend to age quickly, much more so than other type of films. Since social mores change, a film portraying a conflict with the social norms of the era that seems daring at the time it is released looks more and more dated once the social norms are changed. The beginning, portraying Monica fighting with her coarse working class family in their crowded apartment and at their grocer's post, seems to belong to a socialist realism movie. Maybe director Ingmar Bergman was at that point too influenced by the Italian films of the time, but it doesn't look a Swedish milieu at all. Harry is portrayed as the more mature of the two, but at times he is also totally irresponsible, like when he decides to elope with Monica at the moment when his father is gravely ill at the hospital (and what happened to him is never said, apparently he died while the couple were at the island). It is said that Monica became an inspiration to many rebellious girls in the 1950s and 1960s, but I found her character unappealing all way through, not terribly physically attractive and also irresponsible, immature, callous, capricious. And there are some really inept scenes in the movie (yes, I know the scenes were directed by Bergman, but I still would called them ineptly filmed) like when he fights the other guy in the beach or when Monica steals a roasted meat to a middle class family. The movie has a great scene though, that seems to belong to a better and more recent movie, when Monica, after she becomes a mother and is dissatisfied with conjugal life with Harry, flirts in a bar with a new lover and suddenly breaks the fourth wall looking straight at the camera with a seducing look. So this is not a great movie in my view, though at least it gives some material for thought.

Having heard much about this film, I imagined a completely different finale (or rather the second, "after-summer" part). The first half of the movie is brilliant. The dreary city life, the escape, the idyllic existence on the island, Harriet Andersson - all are great. The return back to civilization - that's where he loses it. The every day reality of life is portrayed so hastily that it turns into a banality, overdramatic and totally theatrical at the end of the film. Yet it is a very good film, far from being a masterpiece but it deserves 3.5 stars.