Monika and Harry are in many ways perfect for each other. They are both disaffected outsiders in their own lives, albeit for entirely different reasons. Monika, who is 18, lives in a crowded tenement with her squabbling younger siblings, no-nonsense mother (Naemi Briese), and alcoholic and at times abusive father (Åke Fridell). She feels constricted, crowded, trapped. Nineteen-year-old Harry, on the other hand, has the opposite problem: He lives in a spacious apartment with his sickly, widower father (Georg Skarstedt), and as a result feels lonely and isolated. Monika’s need to escape her family and Harry’s need to connect with someone merge, thus setting off an intense love affair that culminates with both of them quitting their jobs, deserting their families, and taking off in Harry’s father’s boat to live among the islands in the archipelago north of Stockholm (the same setting Bergman used in his earlier film, 1951’s Summer Interlude).

At first, Monika and Harry’s existence is a blissful state of youthful rebellion against the constrictions and conformities of the modern world, as they carve their lives out of the raw of nature, unhindered by schedules, job responsibilities, or families. They are free to wile their days away swimming, dancing to a portable phonograph, and making love. However, their ideal existence is predicated on a fantasy that cannot last, and it begins to crumble when the realities of true survival set in—realities that are greatly increased by the realization that Monika is pregnant. Soon, they are having to scavenge for food by stealing from nearby gardens and orchards, and the pressures of staying alive begin to cut into their idealized romance, fracturing it from within and revealing the inherent fantasy of their enterprise. Thus, when they return to society, marry, and try to build a typical bourgeois existence in a cramped apartment while Henrik studies to become an engineer, it comes as little surprise that their relationship, forged in rebellion against the very thing they have become, is doomed.

Unlike Summer Interlude, which it superficially resembles, Summer With Monika is an inherently pessimistic film, presaging some of Bergman’s most trenchant later works, particularly his masterpiece Scenes From a Marriage (1973). The film’s guiding theme is relational disintegration, as the initial highs in the relationship between Monika and Harry are matched by corresponding lows. Monika, ever the romantic idealist, sees the world through eyes shaped by Hollywood movies and lucid daydreams, and she rubs off on Harry, who is more practical and down to earth, but clearly relishes the bursts of energy and freedom that Monika provides. She allows him to bloom, but she also crushes him when disappointed, blaming him for their lot and betraying him with other men (including an ex-boyfriend) who might be able to satisfy her need to feel wild and unhinged. She becomes hateful by the end, unruly, impractical, and unfair, although Bergman never lets us off the hook, as much of the film’s energy derives from Monika’s earthy sensuality and inhibition. We both admire and detest her. Harriet Andersson, at the time a relatively unknown young actress Bergman cast (and subsequently fell in love with) after seeing her in Gustaf Molander’s Defiance (1952), gives Monika’s sexuality a rich intensity that is both liberating and a bit intimidating, as it suggests the energy of a character who doesn’t know what she wants, but will tear through anything in order to get it.

Although it was his 12th film, Summer With Monika became Bergman’s key international breakthrough, partially because of its scandalous nature. In Sweden, the film’s eroticism, brief nudity, and storylines involving unwed motherhood and adultery didn’t raise many eyebrows, but when it was imported to the United States in the mid-’50s, it became something of an outage, particularly after exploitation showman Kroger Babbe recut it, dubbed it into English, added a jazz soundtrack, and released it in 1955 as Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl!. Almost overnight European art cinema became synonymous stateside with risqué subject matter, bringing together serious cinephiles and tawdry filmgoers in mutual admiration.

There are flashes of genuine brilliance throughout the film, particularly a striking close-up of Monika staring directly into the camera—a technique that was largely verboten at the time, even in the more artistically daring corridors of European cinema. The shot lingers in our mind because it resonates with both emotional intensity (we see the turmoil in Monika’ s heart in her darkened eyes) and meta-cinematic challenge (given that she is about to cheat on Harry, the shot can only be read as Monika daring us to pass judgment). It is the kind of shot that only a true master would dare create, and in Monika’s conflicted stare we see not just a memorable film character at a crossroads, but a window into the future of Bergman’s illustrious career.

Copyright ©2012 James Kendrick

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