Crappy film

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The first must-see film of the year.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHTS is an intelligent, honest and very funny comedy about complicated love relationships between men and women.One prominent lawyer, who is faced with problems in his marriage, requires the help of his former mistress. The famous and beautiful actress wants her former lover. The young man, who was on his way to becoming a priest falls in love with his stepmother. One officer wants to be a good husband and a better lover at the same time. His wicked wife wants him for herself at all costs. There is also a naughty little housemaid who knows her way around an old coachman.This film is full of witty romantic incidents. Philosophic conclusions are attractive and they reflect with a certain elegance. The director skillfully presented a conflict between young (inexperienced) and mature (experienced) form of love. The series of personal complications makes up for the content of the film. This leads to a series of comic situations, criss-crossed love and even explicit scenes. Despite the cynical views on love and sexuality by Mr. Bergman, the end of the film is still happy and all the protagonists are "satisfied".Characterization is commendable. Men are strictly "pompous" figures, while women are sweet and impressionable. Male dignity is exposed to a „serious" satire.Gunnar Björnstrand as Fredrik Egerman is elegant, tough and cunning lawyer. Jarl Kulle as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm is fun, a bit self-centered and arrogant officer. Ulla Jacobsson Anne Egerman is beautiful and even more naive young wife. Eva Dahlbeck as Desiree Armfeldt is a impatient mistress and a single mother. Harriet Andersson (Petra) is lively and merry maid and Åke Fridell (Frid) is a coachman who explains to us the existence of three types of love on a summer night.This is a playful comedy in which love conquers frustration and tragedy turns into farce.

In the lat 19th-century, a slightly-aging and totally amoral actress invites to her country-house party two married men---a lawyer and a count---who have both been her lovers in the past. She also asks them to bring along their wives. She has plans on taking one of them away from his present wife, but also ensure that all her guests leave paired up. The math doesn't work out until an uninvited guest also shows up.The film's plot—which involves switching partners on a summer night—has been adapted many times, most notably as the theatrical musical, A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler and Harold Prince, which opened on Broadway in 1973, and as Woody Allen's film "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" (1982).What actually strikes me about the film is how generally upbeat it is. Bergman is best known for dark, moody existential films. And this is not one of those. Others have noted the same (how can you not?) and point out the strangest thing of all: this was during the darkest period in Bergman's life. So tragedy makes comedy?

Fredrik Egerman is troubled; he has a young wife whom he fears he loves as a doting father than a husband. He seeks help from an old flame, Desiree, who is having an affair with a pompous soldier, Count Malcolm. Desiree invites both men and their wives and Egerman's gloomy son Henrik to her mother's country house for the weekend ...This touching, funny and beautifully observed comedy of sexual manners is one of my favourite Bergman films, made just before he was about to become a key figure in world cinema with movies like Det Sjunde Inseglet and Smultronstället. If you only know him for his heavy-going introspective dramas like Persona and Viskningar Och Rop, check this out as a means of contrast. The story is wonderfully sweet, the characters are sharp and brilliantly played by the entire ensemble and the dialogue will make you chuckle throughout (particularly Wifstrand as the dotty mother with the short attention span). As with all his work, it's Bergman's insight into the universal frailties of human nature that makes the movie so touching; we have a man who has married for beauty not love, a femme fatale who is tired of twisting men around her finger, young lovers who careen between ecstatic joy and suicidal misery, a man who foolishly ranks his pride above all else, and a self-loathing wife who can't stop loving a cheating husband. Bergman dances these characters around each other, making his points with subtle skill and entertaining us with style and wit. The four Swedish female leads - Dahlbeck, Jacobsson, Andersson and Carlqvist - are all stunningly beautiful women. Loosely remade twice; once as a Stephen Sondheim musical (A Little Night Music) and also as a charming Woody Allen farce (A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy). English title - Smiles Of A Summer Night.

The bouncing music and rather silly acting inform us that what we are watching is a comedy. If it were not for those two aspects, it would be easy to mistake the film for a plain drama. The reason for this is that there are no jokes or gags as such. Bergman injects into the script a few witty lines, but I can only guess that some humour is meant to blossom from the film having a satirical viewpoint on love. A comedy does not have to be funny for it to be effective, but if it is not funny it makes the comic aspects redundant. The characters are all developed around love and desire, rather than their own character traits, and there are a few others thing that one could complain about, but either way the film nevertheless says a few things about love. As usual Bergman does a great job setting up all the shots. It is interesting stuff on a visual level, with fitting lighting choices and some long pans. And as with just about every Bergman film, it is worth a look. However, it is difficult for me to recommend this awkward comedy as one of his better films, even though it is the film that really brought Bergman into the spotlight.