Smiles of a Summer Night

Sommarnattens Leende

Ingmar Bergman (1955)

The sex comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, set at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, sees Ingmar Bergman at his most light-hearted (that’s a relative term) and displaying a perfectly light touch.  The time is midsummer and the place is Sweden so darkness visible is not much in evidence.  Even so, the passage of time is structurally important and, as so often in Bergman, a persistent memento mori, both sonic and visual.  There are ticking timepieces, a crowing cock and, eventually, a dawn chorus.  Whenever a clock chimes the hour, worried-looking figures emerge from and move round it, a death’s-head among them.  The principals in the story – four men and four women – are Bergman’s means of exploring different kinds of desire, lust and love.  Some of the partners at the start seem ill-matched; by the end of the film, each coupling is the right one.  The characters’ impulsions are expressed in different social registers, ranging from the blunt to the would-be sophisticated.  They combine to create a celebration of love and of the folly of love.  Bergman must have had A Midsummer Night’s Dream in mind when he wrote Smiles of a Summer Night:  the picture often brings to mind Hippolyta’s judgment of the mechanicals’ play as ‘the silliest stuff’.  The farce form helps Bergman bring out the humour in this all-is-vanity roundelay but he, his actors and the cinematographer Gunnar Fischer find poetry too.

Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Björnstrand), a middle-aged lawyer, has been married to the beautiful Anne (Ulla Jacobsson) for two years but the marriage is still unconsummated.  Henrik (Björn Bjelfvenstam), Fredrik’s son from his first marriage, is slightly older than his stepmother, who’s not yet out of her teens.  Henrik is studying to be a minister of the church but tormented by his feelings for Anne – feelings that she secretly reciprocates.  After a visit to the theatre, Fredrik goes backstage to renew his acquaintance with the famous actress Desiree Armfeldt (Eva Dahlbeck), Fredrik’s lover between his two marriages.   Desiree, who broke off that relationship, now has a young son (also called Fredrik) and is currently the mistress of an army officer, Count Carl Magnus Malcolm (Jarl Kulle).  He is the husband of Charlotte (Margit Karlqvist), a long-time friend of Anne Egerman.  The fourth pairing is Anne’s maid Petra (Harriet Andersson) and her lover Frid (Åke Fridell), also a servant.  Others in the cast include Bibi Andersson, in a cameo as an actress, and Naima Wifstrand, as Desiree’s mother, who invites the principals to a midsummer night’s party, at which she presides.  The ancient-looking Mrs Armfeldt tells her guests that she’s kept her health by never listening to what other people have to say.

The main characters – just now seems a good time to call them ‘the loveful eight’ – are beautifully written by Bergman and, in all cases, beautifully interpreted.  Especially memorable are Eva Dahlbeck’s voluptuous, nearly overripe Desiree; Jarl Kulle’s Count, who, with his exaggeratedly straight-backed military bearing, is very comical; Harriet Andersson’s earthy, funny, vivid Petra; and the pivotal Fredrik Egerman.  From his first appearance, striding along the street in his close-fitting business coat, Fredrik is a figure of fun.  He is never in control in his dealings with women; he’s confidently authoritative only in conversation with his anguished son.  (This young man – shortly before he eventually elopes with Anne – tells God that, if His world is sinful, ‘I want to sin’.)  The confrontation between Fredrik and the Count climaxes in what is surely the most (the only?) enjoyable game of Russian roulette in cinema history.  Gunnar Björnstrand’s exquisite comic performance reaches a peak in this episode but it’s superb throughout.  Fredrik Egerman repeatedly loses his dignity.  As played by Björnstrand, he knows how silly he looks but he keeps trying unavailingly to limit the damage.  He is a true fool for love.

It’s never difficult to get the gist of what’s being said in this film but the subtitling on the print I saw at the BFI this November was remarkably skimpy.  I can always find plenty to criticise about BFI, of course, but this is probably the right note in which to admit that I’m not sure what I’d do without it now:  I’ve a particular fondness for Smiles of a Summer Night not only because it’s a wonderful film but also because it was the very first one I saw after joining BFI in early 2003.  (I joined because they were running a full Bergman retrospective and I wanted to find out more about his work.)  Conversations between Frid and Petra explain the film’s title.  He tells her that the summer night has three smiles.  The first smile is ‘between midnight and dawn, when young lovers open their hearts and loins’.  The second is for ‘the jesters, the fools and the incorrigible’.  The third smile is for ‘the sad and dejected, for the sleepless and lost souls, for the frightened and the lonely’.  When the night smiles this last smile, it’s morning.  Out in the fields where Petra and Frid are, the windmill, on which Bergman’s camera finally rests, is still turning.

21 November 2015