Ingmar Bergman's To Joy | Till glädje (1949)

The title of this comes from Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy, on which part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is based. The film is a seven-year flashback and we learn of the accidental death of the protagonist's wife at the beginning of the film. Stig (Stig Olin) and Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) play violin in an orchestra directed by Sönderby (Victor Sjöström*) and soon marry with children. It's the huge ambitions of Stig that are the problem, and he wants to be a soloist, although Sönderby knows that this will not be possible. Then Stig starts becoming involved with Nelly (Margit Carlqvist). This is far from being Bergman's best film, and I think it's mainly the melodrama that spoils it, although some may consider that the music redeems it.

 *Sjöström (1879-1960) was a noted film director who also starred in Bergman's Wild Strawberries.

Ingmar Bergman's Port of Call | Hamnstad (1948)

This early Bergman is a condemnation of hypocritical bourgeois values, a criticism of a society tied up in knots with its ideas of good and bad, moral and amoral, etc. It is something of a minor master work for so early an example of the giant of cinema Bergman would become.

Berit (Nine-Christine Jönsson), meaning to drown herself, throws herself in the cold water but is rescued. Later, Gösta (Bengt Eklund) sees her at a dancehall and they spend the night together, Berit's father being away at sea – a job from which Gösta has just returned and doesn't want to go back to – and her mother away for the night. Berit works in a factory and Gösta now works at the docks. Gösta has left when Berit's mother (Berta Hall) has returned, although she notes that there are cigarette butts in the ashtray and Berit doesn't smoke. When Berit leaves for work, her mother calls Mrs Vilander (Birgitta Valberg), her daughter's probation officer: there is a chance that Berit will have to return to reformatory school.

Initially via the pregnant Gertrud (Mimi Nelson) in desperate need of an abortion, we later learn what Berit feels she must tell Gösta about her past: several years before, the girl went to live with a man, was discovered, and sent to reformatory, where she met Gertrud. She has had a number of sexual liaisons, which Gösta hypocritically (all part of the double standard, of course) finds difficult to stomach. After a botched backstreet abortion Gertrud has to be sent to hospital and dies: Gösta finds this intolerable, although in the end he gets together with Berit and they decide that instead of escaping they will learn to take the flak and continue in Stockholm.

Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika | Sommaren med Monika (1953)

Summer with Monika was adapted from Per Anders Fogelström's 1951 novel. This is Stockhom and the pushy young Monika (Harriet Andersson) meets young Harry (Lars Ekborg) in a gloomy café during his lunch break: both are working-class dogsbodies and they arrange to go to the cinema together. Sick of the abuse she's receiving from her alcoholic father, Monika leaves home and the couple spend the night on Harry's father's small motor-boat. Following another row at work, Harry leaves his job and the two leave Stockholm in the boat and spend a blissful summer cruising around. Monika gets pregnant.

The summer ended, they return to the capital, where Harry gets a job and starts night school in preparation for married life with his new wife. But Monika just complains that the enjoyment has gone, they don't go to the cinema anymore, etc. Harry returns one day to find Monika with another man. End of the relationship, Harry takes custody of the child and dreams of the life that was.

In the States the title was changed to Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl, with the sales pitch being the nudity in it.

Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night | Sommarnattens leende (1955)

It's a long time since I've seen a Bergman film, and I certainly hadn't seen this, the film that led to him being an internationally renowned film director. It's far from the normal film that some would describe as 'Bergmanesque': bleak, full of existential angst, suicidal thoughts, etc. This film though may treat the same subjects but in a comical way, and it is, after all, described in the title as a romantic comedy ('romantisk comedi'), even if it's unmistakably Bergman.

This is a fin-de-siècle tale starring the middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman (Gunnar Björnstrand), married for two years to the nineteen-year-old Anne (Ulla Jacobsson), who's still a virgin but who tells him she's working on not being: let's face it, these things take time, especially with the upper middle class, and the family servant Petra (Harriet Andersson) tells her she lost her virginity at sixteen; and Petra seems to have a mature but teasing way of dealing with Fredrik's sex-starved son (by his first wife) Henrik (Björn Bjelfvenstam).

Between wives, Fredrik had an affair with actress Desirée (Eva Dahlbeck), who is now (boringly) in an affair with Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Jarl Kulle), who is married to Charlotte (Margit Carlqvist), a friend of Anne's. Things start to come to a head when everyone is invited (with some plotting) to the home of Désirée's mother for a Midsommar bash, and Henrik throws a real funny and starts getting suicidal during dinner.

But as most of the planet apart from me must have seen this film, let's cut to the quick and I'll say what I found so funny about it before and after the dinner. Petra's prick-teasing of Henrik is obvious, but what of Fredrik secretly visiting Désirée and (after falling in a huge puddle, being thrown out by Malcolm: holding his own still wet clothes and in borrowed underwear? There are many funny, almost slapstick gags (yes, this is Bergman) but surely the best must be Henrik's failure to hang himself? That's not even black humour, it's just comical: his neck-strap slips off its hook, he falls to the wall and in so doing presses a button which releases a concealed bed on which his beloved is sleeping. But here's the killer: perhaps in recognition of Henrik's excitement on seeing Anne, and/or perhaps in recognition of unintended auto-erotic asphyxiation, a cupid-like/angelic sculpture above the static headboard raises a looong bugle as if in erection.

OK, I forgot to mention Fredrik being challenged to Russian roulette, Malcolm losing and instead of receiving a bullet in the face gets a heap of soot, but that's a minor issue: this is a whale of a laugh from Bergman, and I never thought I'd live to say that.