Just so...so bad

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is a lovely and sweet story which tells a beautiful ballerina mourning her lover's death at her youthful age. She is too sad to get away the great sorrow and open her mind to a journalist who is her lately lover. This film not only tells the wonderful memories and the praise of life but also faces the shadow of death. I like their performance and the narrative of intertwining the romantic moment and the tragic event. Ingmar Bergman truly did a great movie at the beginning in 1950s, preceding the following masterpieces in the film history.

"Summer Interlude" is an exquisitely filmed movie. While it is in black & white, the cinematography and way the shots are framed is just striking and make the film well worth seeing. As for the movie itself, it's pretty much what most would expect from an Ingmar Bergman film....something that leaves you depressed and feeling that life has no meaning!!The film begins with Marie a veteran ballerina. When she receives an old diary, she begins to think back to her youth and her doomed relationship with an ultra-serious young man, Henrik. You see them enjoying each other and looking to the future...all the while you KNOW it cannot end well....and it doesn't. By the end, Marie has said that he hates God, that life has no meaning and she's essentially waiting to die...all a bit much for a 28 year-old woman.The overall film is naturally unpleasant. It has lovely moments but considering how it all plays out...well, let's just say it's NOT a movie that the clinically depressed should watch!! Worth seeing but not among Bergman's very best--mostly because although the film is shot so wonderfully, it's existential angst is tough to watch AND it made me laugh in the flashback scenes at a nearly 30 year-old actress is playing a girl of only 15!

Better translated as "Summerplay" or "Summer Games," Bergman's 1951 offering is considered the iconic Swedish director's first "mature" work. Bergman also was quoted on more than one occasion that this particular film was the first in which his "independent" voice was heard.Like Summer with Monika, which appeared two years later, Summer Interlude focuses on the relationship between a young couple spending their summer in the Stockholm archipelago. Despite a dark plot twist, Summer Interlude ends up on an optimistic note, in contrast to "Monika," which highlights the pessimism of a relationship gone sour.Bergman's protagonist is Marie (Maj-Britt Nillson), an emotionally cut- off, 28 year old ballet dancer, about to perform in a final dress rehearsal of Swan Lake. Marie's "ordinary world" is the backstage at the theater where she works. Although it takes a while to get to the "inciting incident" where the story gets going, we're content to observe all the backstage machinations, as Bergman's true-life experience in the theater is proffered in high relief.While the dress rehearsal is delayed due to a technical glitch, Marie receives a package containing the long-lost diary of her college-aged lover, Henrik, whom she had an intense relationship when she was 15 years old; this propels her to take a ferryboat to the archipelago where the two young lovers began an ill-fated relationship marred by a horrible tragedy.We flashback to those halcyon days of youth with Nillson transforming herself into a carefree, fledgling ballet student. She's staying with two friends of her deceased mother, whom she refers to as her Aunt Elisabeth and Uncle Erland. The "Uncle" proves to be a lascivious character, making it clear that he has designs on the teenager, despite the complete inappropriateness of the situation. Marie innocently dismisses Erland's behavior and nothing comes of it until much later.The bulk of the story concerns Marie's relationship with Henrik. Bergman's portrait of Marie, a mercurial waif of sorts but also completely devoted to her ballet craft, is the best part of the film. One of the highlights of their interaction is a completely original comic animated depiction of the relationship that appears on a record label of all places! Henrik is less developed as a multi-dimensional character—he's a brooding fellow who is perhaps on the verge of overcoming his fears about getting out into the world. That's all cut short when Henrik is killed when he mistakenly dives over a cliff into shallow water.Marie is so devastated that she blurts out that she doesn't believe God exists and will hate him until the day she dies. Flash forward to the present and Marie meets up with Uncle Erland who admits that it was he who sent her Henrik's diary. It was Erland who urged her to cut herself off from her emotions at the time of the accident (wouldn't Erland have been a bit more subtle in his exhortations for Marie to bottle herself up as he was engaging in the not so subtle act of seducing her?). Nonetheless, in the present, Marie now makes it clear that she despises Erland for how he took advantage of her.Summer Interlude ends with an uncharacteristic "happy ending." The woman who cursed God thirteen years earlier and endures the ballet master's cogent analysis of her current situation of emotional paralysis, suddenly does a 180 degree, allows her current boyfriend David to read Henrik's diary and then the next day kisses him, before throwing herself optimistically into to the now live performance of Swan Lake.The abrupt transition between the wounded teenager turned adult and optimistic professional dancer, doesn't quite ring true. Nonetheless, all the hints of Bergman's masterpieces soon to come, are there in Summer Interlude; especially the masterful cinematography of Gunnar Fischer, one of Bergman's long-time collaborators. Summer Interlude is worth watching in its own right as there are still many elements indicative of a true master film director at work.

While waiting for the night rehearsal of the ballet Swan Lake, the lonely twenty-eight year-old ballerina Marie (Maj-Britt Nilsson) receives a diary through the mail. She travels by ferry to an island nearby Stockholm, where she recalls her first love Henrik (Birger Malmsten). Thirteen years ago, while traveling to spend her summer vacation with her aunt Elisabeth (Renée Björling) and her uncle Erland (Georg Funkquist), Marie meets Henrik in the ferry and sooner they fall in love for each other. They spend summer vacation together when a tragedy separates them and Marie builds a wall affecting her sentimental life."Sommarlek" is a simple little film of the great director Ingmar Bergman in the beginning of his successful career. The plot discloses through flashbacks a tragic and timeless love story affecting the life of the lead character that builds a wall to protect her sentiments and loses her innocence with her corrupt uncle. The cinematography, landscapes, sceneries and camera work are awesome, using magnificent locations and unusual angles to shot the movie. Maj-Britt Nilsson and Birger Malmsten have great performances in this beautiful and melancholic film. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Juventude" ("Youth")