Summer Interlude

Cast & Crew

Maj-Britt Nilsson

Marie

Alf Kjellin

David Nyström

Birger Malmsten

Henrik

Georg Funkquist

Uncle Erland

Annalisa Ericson

Kaj

Stig Olin

Balletmästare

Mimi Pollak

Fru Calwagen

Renée Björling

Elisabeth

Ingmar Bergman

Director

Ingmar Bergman

Writer

Herbert Grevenius

Writer

Allan Ekelund

Producer

Erik Nordgren

Music

Bengt Wallerström

Music

Show all Cast & Crew

News & Interviews for Summer Interlude

Now Streaming: Scream, While We’re Young, Halloween TV Episodes, And More

View All

Critic Reviews for Summer Interlude

Audience Reviews for Summer Interlude

• Jun 29, 2013

  this film really seemed like a turning point for bergman. the film has a few of the signature bergman moments of stunning dialogue, although for the first time in his career to this point dialogue wasnt the real strength, i was more interested in the cinematography and locations. this film was shot so well and the emotional depth brought by a female character was also new and would become a staple for later films of his. a fantastic film.
  

  Super Reviewer
• Jan 07, 2010

  having only seen one bergman film previous to this i wasn't expecting too much as i found wild strawberries a bit boring. what is the fascination with strawberries he has? marie had a hidden strawberry patch... the actress that plays her, maj-britt nilsson is beautiful. obviously sommarlek is a drama but the tone of it came across as fearful, a horror... the horror of life. a masterpiece. maybe i will look out for more ingmar bergman now as this one made an impression on me
  

  Super Reviewer
• Dec 13, 2009

  Among outstanding film directors there are those who crash in with debut features that show something of the full extent of their talent (Satyajit Ray with "Pather Panchali", Neil Jordan with "Angel" and of course Orson Welles with "Citizen Kane") and those like Ingmar Bergman who creep into the scene with films that are little less than mediocre, but who develop slowly, almost unobtrusively, giving only occasional hints of the glories to come. Bergman first came to notice as the proficient scriptwriter for Alf Sjoberg's "Hets", a 1944 shocker with echos of "The Blue Angel". Sjoberg's direction is impressive with much use of expressionist shadows and angles. The strange thing about Bergman's directional debut, "Kris", two years later is what little he appeared to have absorbed from his mentor. "Kris" is a very two dimensional work that could have been made by almost anyone. This was followed by several similar apprentice works which again give very little indication of what was to come. I would date the emergence of the original Bergman voice from the appearance of "Summer Interlude" in 1951. Although on the surface this appears to be a very conventional tale of an idyllic romance cut short by a tragic twist of fate, the sort of youth/love/death cocktail that was the mainstay of so much Hollywood drama ("Kings Row", "Love Story" and "Dead Poets Society"), the treatment is often very personal in a way that we can almost feel an innate artist struggling to express something beyond the superficial. It opens with a visually stunning series of still-life shots of the sort that Ozu always inserted between each short dramatic scene. We immediately feel this is a film that is demanding to be taken seriously. When the ballerina heroine takes a boat to the archipelago where thirteen years before she met the young man who was to become the love of her life, memory is unleashed and we relive in flashbacks her past happiness. Sometimes Bergman is in complete control of his material as when the ballerina leaves the boat and uneasy memories seem reflected in the sound of the wind and there is a silent encounter with a mysterious elderly woman whose path almost touches hers - a device he was to use to even more chilling effect years later when Liv Ullmann passes an elderly lady in the corridor to an apartment flat in "Face to Face". In other places his command is less certain and borders on cliche - when the doomed young man speaks of his premonition of something dark, and indeed the shot of a black cloud a moment after the accident that is to prove fatal. Bergman also makes the mistake of sometimes cluttering the narrative with supporting characters which add very little to the forward flow - the rather tiresome behind the scenes workers at the theatre. Although the film is a romantic tragedy it differs from the works of his central period in the way it comes to terms with life's misfortunes. The ballerina learns from her memories that her life has a continuation, that it is still possible to forge new relationships. Bergman was to regain something of this confident belief in the worthwhile qualities of life in later works like "Cries and Whispers" and "Fanny and Alexander" but not until he had become resigned to rather than angered by God's silence. It is perhaps significant that in "Summer Interlude", where he had not quite sorted out his responses to life or the medium in which he was working, the most powerful scene of all is where the ballerina rails at God's silence after her lover has been taken from her and craves for the opportunity to spit at God should he appear. There is not a single scene that expresses anything like this that I can recall in Hollywood drama. It indicates more clearly than anything else in Bergman's output up to this point the path he was about to take in expressing his dark vision of the world, one in which the conventions of commercial cinema were to have no place.
  

  Super Reviewer
• Aug 01, 2008

  Brilliant Bergman that contains many themes and techniques he would use to greater effect in later films.
  

  Super Reviewer