Smiles of a Summer Night
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Year Released: 1955
Rating: 4.0
Truly wonderful romantic film by Bergman - yes, Bergman - about various people looking for love - or lost loves - and the dinner party that brings them together. Remarkably, it's like almost nothing else the director's made - ebullient, wistful, carefree - and closer to Lubitsch or even Renoir's Rules of the Game than his darker and more brooding films. The title fits perfectly - it's precisely my idea of what a blissful summer of love gained and love lost would feel like (everyone wins but not in the way they planned) - and just in case anyone thought the director was losing it, there's plenty of Freudian psychology in there (young man marries his stepmother, an older man's wife can't consummate her marriage with him - he's more of a 'father-figure' than husband, and so on). Ironically, Bergman said it was written during the darkest time of his life, reinforcing the theory that humor comes from misery. What a marvelous film.
