He wasn't always the old glum maestro. Although the young lovers in "Summer with Monika" might have fitted quite easily into a British Kitchen Sink film, this early Bergman is less grim than we later came to expect and although minor, this film has much to admire; it actually reminded me a bit of "A Kind of Loving".A young Harriet Andersson is Monika and Lars Ekborg is Harry, the boy who loves her enough to want to spend a lot longer than just the summer with her. You might say that for Bergman this is a very simple picture filled with very simple people but Bergman treats them with a fair degree of sympathy. Monika may be just a little tart or simply a young woman trapped in an early marriage while Harry is always seen as trying to do the decent thing and the ending, if not exactly upbeat, is less of a Bergman downer than usual. No masterpiece, then, but an essential part of the canon nevertheless.

The actors are great, the majority, but above all the two protagonists. The question is whether this is enough to keep the movie. I think it has several speeds and that is the worst thing I have. Many times in the summer time, it expands on descriptive planes, the exit and entrance, and then the end of the film tells the story of a couple, how he solves his life, how she is fed up and changes her life, And everything at full speed.If that marks very well as was the world at that time, although I have my doubts that the girls were like that, not even in Sweden.But I've put a five because although I do not like the film in the end but I think it's done in earnest and pretends to tell something, but it's boring me a lot.Spoiler: I think the best thing about the film after thinking a lot is the title. I thought because I would be serious and I understand that it is because after all I only spent that time with her.Although the plane when she dresses and is going to go and flirt and have fun is great. The rest of the movie, I do not like almost anything like it's shot. I do not usually like Ingmar Bergman rolling and this was not going to be less. Saving some loose plane I believe it rather because it wants to make general plans that by vision in front of the camera.

This Swedish film was the first directed by Ingmar Bergman (Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander) to appear in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and ironically the last of his films from the book left for me to see. Basically set in the bleak working-class surroundings of Stockholm, Sweden, easygoing nineteen- year-old Harry Lund (Lars Ekborg) works in a crockery warehouse, in the stock room packing all kind of dishes, glasses and porcelain, and adventurous seventeen-year-old Monika Eriksson (Harriet Andersson) works in a warehouse for vegetables. Both dislike their dead end jobs, Harry hates being constantly reprimanded by his bosses, despite being a good employee, and despite being a happy and cheerful Monika hates being constantly besieged by other boys and an ex-boyfriend trying to get back with her, the two meet each other at a café. They fall in love with each other and find the strength to get away from their grim lives, Monika ends the domestic problems with her constantly drunken father Ludwig (Åke Fridell), she argues until she leave home, and Harry has an argument with his boss until he quits his job. Harry takes all his stuff with him and he and Monika run away together to the countryside, near a lake, and he steals his father's boat so that they can spend an idyllic summer and many joyous days in the Stockholm archipelago, this adventure becomes difficult however when, without jobs and money, they are forced to steal food to survive. The adventure officially ends when Monika becomes pregnant, Harry accepts the responsibilities he will be faced with, they return to the city together, to a bog-standard suburban life, they get married and start from the bottom with their newborn child, Harry gets himself a real job and studies to provide for his family. But Monika is unhappy being the homemaker, all she wanted was to have fun, she still longs for excitement and adventure, the couple rushed into this life without knowing the suffering that would ensue, so in the end Monika is led astray and leaves Harry behind with the child. Also starring John Harryson as Lelle, Harry's rival, Dagmar Ebbesen as Fru Lindström, Harry's faster, Naemi Briese as Monika's mother and Åke Grönberg as Foreman. Andersson is good looking and likable as the sassy teenager, Ekborg is alright also as the young man smitten by her, this black- and- white picture works well as both as love story that seems sweet and innocent for a while, but will turn sour when emotions and tragedy properly set in, besides that there are brilliant sunlit scenes with isolated islands and beaches, it has impressive visual tone, all in all it is a worthwhile romantic drama. Very good!

In Ingmar Bergman's 1953 film SOMMAREN MED MONIKA (The Summer with Monika), young, idealistic Harry (Lars Ekborg) meets the freespirited Monika (Harriet Andersson). Fed up with their dull stockroom jobs as midsummer approaches, they quit and and escape together to one of the myriad islands in the Stockholm archipelago. But while Harry is keen to get back to civilization and further his education in order to support the child they will soon have, Harriet thinks little of the future, pursuing her own whims of the moment. Harry is definitely the protagonist here, and receives the sympathy of the viewer as this bad girl tears his life apart.Upon its release, this film was a major contribution to Sweden's mid-century reputation as a sexually liberated place. However, that's all very much in the past. There is only one scene of (rear) nudity, and for the most part what 1950s audiences found scandalous is just some snogging that wouldn't raise eyebrows today. Still, Andersson does know how to flaunt her sex appeal, her full lips and proportioned figure, to the camera.In my opinion, this is not one of the greatest films of the auteur scene. Ingmar Bergman would go on to create a series of masterpieces that totally shook my world, but SOMMAREN MED MONIKA is a somewhat ordinary study of working class life and a morality tale much like British audiences would start getting with their kitchen sink dramas (e.g. BILLY LIAR) in the following years. There is also a totally contrived -- and rather inexplicable -- fight scene that Bergman needlessly uses to make Harry look chivalrous. Still, it is interesting to see a Sweden of severe class divisions that is now almost gone, with alcoholism-stricken families in dire poverty living alongside more fortunate Stockholm residents who keep servants. The first third of the film is almost like listening to an Allan Pettersson symphony.All in all, the film is entertaining and teaches us something about an earlier time and place, but don't think this is one of the more serious films that established Ingmar Bergman as one of the most daring and insightful filmmakers of the 20th century.