Summer with Monika

Harry and Monika encounter each other at a café close to their respective workplaces – a stock and a grocery store. Monika, playful and fearless, invites the shy and reserved Harry on a night out. Soon the two start dating. In their daily life, both feel intimidated by the unwanted attention from people that are their seniors, such as their drunken parents, colleagues, or supervisors. One day Monika has finally had it, and runs away with Harry in a small boat, escaping to the sun-drenched Stockholm archipelago. “We are rebels!”, they cheer, but soon they are caught up by reality.

Summer With Monika marks Ingmar Bergman’s first collaboration with Harriet Andersson, one of the many actors who would later occur again and again in his films. Here she steals nearly every scene, in her energetically, passionately and sometimes too hastily fast-forward mode. No wonder that audiences were captivated by her fascinating presence (Andersson quickly became the quintessential liberated Scandinavian woman). Both François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were inspired by the film, and they have both paid tribute to the scene in which Monika turns and stares directly into the camera onto the audience. Godard also enthusiastically praised the film in the Cahiers du Cinéma journal, and he declared Bergman to be the most original living European filmmaker.

Although Summer With Monika is not without its flaws, and although some scenes come across as a bit forced, it is a very accessible and watchable film with some truly brilliant moments that testify to Bergman’s talent and potential as a director.