Sommarnattens leende

Kesäyön hymyilyä. SE 1955. PC: Svensk Filmindustri. D+SC: Ingmar Bergman. DP: Gunnar Fischer. Starring Ulla Jacobsson (Anne Egerman), Eva Dahlbeck (Désirée Armfelt), Margit Carlquist (Charlotte Malcolm), Harriet Andersson (Petra), Gunnar Björnstrand (Fredrik Egerman), Jarl Kulle (Count Carl Magnus Malcolm), Åke Fridell (the groom Frid), Björn Belvenstrand (Henrik Egerman). 109 min. Vintage print with Finnish subtitles by Aito Mäkinen. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 12 June 2008. - Beautiful definition of light, as if struck from the negative. - My previous impression of this was that Bergman tries hard to do a sophisticated comedy of manners, and the world of the leisure classes is slightly too boring to care. - This time I have more the sense of something affected, forced, and cynical in a slightly shallow way. This film does not flow from the heart (like Bergman's masterpieces of the decade and also several of his lesser films). - But the mechanism in the style of the French 19th century plays is brilliantly and cinematically realized, the actor ensemble is perfect, the cinematography is lovely. - Comparing with Lubitsch: in my opinion, the secret of the Lubitsch touch is a cinematic crystallization of an insight that is simultaneously ironic and cordial. Here Bergman is a bit too smug and not cordial enough.