As I pointed out to my twitter followers, one of these days somebody needs to do a scholarly dissertation on the significance of water in the films of Ingmar Bergman. So many of his films involve swimming, oceans, beaches, rivers, lakes, and ponds. His 1951 film Summer Interlude can be counted among these, as one of its most important scenes involves the death of a young man during a cliff-diving accident. The man's name was Henrik and he made his fatal plunge in order to impress his lover named Marie. That was thirteen years ago. Today Marie is a ballerina who discovers the diary Henrik's diary during a dress rehearsal for Swan Lake. When the rehearsal is cancelled due to technical problems with the stage lights, Marie spends her day remembering that fateful summer of love with Henrik. Told largely in flashback, Summer Interlude was one of the most important films in Bergman's early filmography. Perhaps I'll let the great Pauline Kael explain: "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." It's true that unlike many of his later films, Summer Interlude seems uncharacteristically optimistic. Even the tragedy of Henrik's death is countered by the start of a new, optimistic relationship with a journalist called David. The film even ends with a short dance number from Swan Lake that ends triumphantly. Whereas many of Bergman's later films would espouse tragedy and the impossibility of reconciliation, Summer Interlude is a brief glimmer of optimism.
7/10
.jpg)
0 Yorumlar