Review of Summer with Monika

There’s a hint of spring in the air. This is the observation of a grizzled worker in a pub as he watches a young couple meet and agree upon a date. The weather outside is typical of Stockholm during this time of year: cold and overcast. But that eternal cycle of seasons is following its course and it begins with Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (Harriet Andersson).

The two teenagers come from poor, working class families. Monika has a large family with annoying younger siblings. Harry has a father who is rarely seen. Both share a hatred for their jobs.

When Monika suggests that they run off to travel, Harry laughs it off — initially. But as the monotony and distaste for their lives begin to worsen, the idea becomes tempting enough that the two lovers decide to make a run for it on Harry’s boat. They pass through the bleak waterways of the city and escape to the islands of the Stockholm archipelago.

Life is idyllic. Rolling clouds pass over a seemingly endless sea of shimmering water. They pass the time living simply and enjoying the freedom from their former constraints. Their love affair is as innocent as the life they escaped to.

The summer soon comes to an end. As the skies become slate grey and the sea swells and hurls against the beach, Monika discovers that she’s pregnant. Food becomes scarce. They finally decide that it’s time to return and start a life for the child.

In the scene after Monika is nearly caught stealing food from a local family, Harry holds her and tells her that they have been dreaming themselves. The question in both of their eyes is whether their bond can survive the reality that they have to wake up to.

With a harsh winter approaching, the couple must come to terms with a world that they, much like the parents that they left, cannot control. In the end, only one of them is willing to.

Summer with Monika is one of Ingmar Bergman’s earlier films. It’s a stark, contemporary portrayal of idealistic love and the challenges it faces when the pressures of life are too great for the illusion to be kept up. There are few cases of “happily ever after” in life and Bergman’s films often reflect this. The fleeting moments of bliss in a hard, demanding existence can only be sustained in memory. In one of the most powerful fade-ins in film history, Harry stares into the window of a shop with his child in his arms and for a moment relives the summer. As the memory concludes, he watches the ever-shrinking silhouette of their boat cross the sea back to Stockholm and fade into the pupil of his eye.

Bergman’s film predated the French New Wave movement and the era of free love in America by almost a decade. Its honest love scenes between two teenagers was quickly condemned by conservative moralists. In a telling example of the emotional maturity of American studios in the 1950s, Summer with Monika was licensed, cut down to a half-hour, and retitled to Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl to make it more palatable to the American public. Whatever realism and ethics the film had was removed in order to change it into an exploitive B-movie with a title that fit the ignorance of the times.

There was no judgment behind Bergman’s lens. The story illustrates the flaws and mistakes of a couple too young to know the demands of love–a theme that is as old as humanity itself, reflected in the seasons that we are born into and inevitably die from.