Summer With Monika

Throughout cinema history there have been those directors who could capture human emotions perfectly. One director who could do this and make those emotions so horrifyingly real was Ingmar Bergman. What Bergman did in a lot of his films was build up a foundation of tightly woven characters and through the course of the film tear them down to nearly nothing. One of his earlier works, Summer With Monika (1953) is on exception.
The film follows young lovers Monika (Harriet Andersson) and Harry (Lars Ekborg) who are fed up with the daily hassles of their everyday lives. Feeling that all they need is each other, they run away on Harry's father's boat and begin their adventure.
At first everything is wonderful and they don't want the romance or they adventure to end. But complications arise when Monika becomes pregnant and their food supply is running short. Forced to go back to soceity, the walls of reality begin to box them in again. Their romance diminishes into nothing after the baby is born and Monika finds love with other men.
Bergman presents a harsh look at young love in this film. It starts out so beautiful but ends so darkly, a feat that Bergman handles wonderfully. Harriet Andersson gives a wonderful performance here was the devilishly seductive Monika who seduces and then reduces the naive Harry. Nobody but Bergman could do what he did here.
This film is availble to watch on the Criterion's HuluPlus channel: http://www.hulu.com/watch/242443/summer-with-monika. This film is also being released through the Criterion Collection on DVD and blu-ray on May 29. This is a definite must see for any Bergman fan and any fan of Swedish cinema.
This is a fantastic film filled with the harsh reality of young love and how fleeting it is only as Ingmar Bergman could have presented it. And Harriet Andersson gives an intense performance.