Smiles of a Summer Night
Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title: Sommarnattens leende
Date: January 01, 1955 to December 31, 1955
Dates Note: 1955
Country of Origin:
Sweden
Place of Origin: Sweden
Languages:
Swedish
Color: B&W
Silent: No
Based On:
Additional Info:
Curator Notes
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
In Focus: Ingmar BergmanDescription:
One of the cinema’s great erotic comedies. The plot is an Ophulsian ronde of love affairs and intrigues revolving around a middle-aged lawyer (Gunnar Björnstrand); his young wife who remains a virgin; his former mistress, a sophisticated stage actress (Eva Dahlbeck); her lover, and his wife. They gather for a weekend at the country estate of the actress’s elderly mother, who works a kind of magic on this ménage of infinite possibilities. A true parody of the ridiculous male, this is a comic working-out of an idea suggested so tragically in Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel—that men are a species of beast who turn to women to save them from being totally humiliated. Not always a smart move.
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Bergman 100: A Summer InterludeDescription:
One of the cinema’s great erotic comedies. The plot is an Ophulsian ronde of love affairs and intrigues revolving around a middle-aged lawyer (Gunnar Björnstrand); his young wife who remains a virgin; his former mistress, a sophisticated stage actress (Eva Dahlbeck); her lover, and his wife. They gather for a weekend at the country estate of the actress’s elderly mother, who works a kind of magic on this ménage of infinite possibilities. A true parody of the ridiculous male, this is a comic working-out of an idea suggested so tragically in Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel—that men are a species of beast who turn to women to save them from being totally humiliated. Not always a smart move.
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