Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman, 1951)

Maj-Britt Nilsson in Summer Interlude

Marie: Maj-Britt Nilsson
Henrik: Birger Malmsten
David Nyström: Alf Kjellin
Kaj: Annalisa Ericson
Uncle Erland: Georg Funkquist
Ballet Master: Stig Olin
Henrik's Aunt: Mimi Pollak
Aunt Elisabeth: Renée Björling
Priest: Gunnar Olsson

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, Herbert Grevenius
Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer
Production design: Nils Svenwall
Film editing: Oscar Rosander
Music: Erik Nordgren

Maj-Britt Nilsson gives a stunning performance as the ballerina haunted by death -- both the literal death of the young man with whom she once had the titular summer interlude and the slow death of her career, which depends on the youthful vitality she can feel beginning to slip away. Like Ingmar Bergman's earlier To Joy (1950), which starred Nilsson and many of the same actors, it's a fable about art and life, about the conflict of the public persona of a career with the personal needs of an intimate relationship. Unlike To Joy, in which Nilsson's character is subordinate to that of her musician husband, Bergman has shifted the focus to the woman -- a focus that he would maintain for most of his remaining career. Summer Interlude may be his first great film, and Nilsson's ability to move from the winsome young Marie -- sometimes evoking the young Audrey Hepburn -- to the toughened, successful prima ballerina is remarkable. Perhaps the most startling moment comes when the older Marie removes her stage makeup, which has the effect of making her look older and harder, to reveal the remaining traces of the younger woman -- a fine reversal of the usual film trope of removing the makeup to reveal the effects of aging. 

To Joy (Ingmar Bergman, 1950)

Victor Sjöström, Maj-Britt Nilsson, and Stig Olin in To Joy

Stig Eriksson: Stig Olin
Marta Olsson: Maj-Britt Nilsson
Sönderby: Victor Sjöström
Marcel: Birger Malmsten
Mikael Bro: John Ekman
Nelly Bro: Margit Carlqvist

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman
Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer
Production design: Nils Svenwall
Film editing: Oscar Rosander

Not long ago, while watching some YouTube videos of symphony orchestra performances, I was struck by how few women players were in the ranks of the great orchestras of Berlin and Vienna, especially in comparison to the numbers of women in the equivalent orchestras of New York, Boston, and Chicago. Even when the soloist was an Anne-Sophie Mutter or a Julia Fischer, the ranks of players behind her were almost exclusively male. It didn't take much Googling to learn that the fact hasn't escaped the notice of women musicians, especially in Europe. So I wasn't surprised when the crusty old conductor played by Victor Sjöström in Ingmar Bergman's To Joy introduced Marta Olsson, a new member of his orchestra, by commenting that her talent was "against nature." Eventually, Marta gives up her profession to raise the children she and fellow musician Stig Eriksson produce, while (mostly) patiently suffering his ego and infidelity. He's the one who, though tormented by the fear that he's mediocre, tries to move from the orchestra into a concert soloist, suffering a crushing setback when his attempt at performing the Mendelssohn violin concerto ends in disaster. The film is a flashback to their marriage after she dies, and though he's softened a bit by her kindness and good nature, he retains his egotism and self-doubt in equal measures. It's easy enough to see Stig Eriksson as the director's self-portrait, coming as it does after the failure of his second marriage. "Joy" is not an emotion that we readily associate with Bergman, though in this film it's an allusion to the final choral movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony, an excerpt from which is performed at the end of the film. The Freude of Beethoven (and of the Schiller poem that he set to music) is an emanation of the divine, emerging after struggle and pain, and Bergman tries to embody it in Stig and Marta's young son, sitting alone in the concert hall as the orchestra rehearses the symphony. It's a conclusion that teeters on the edge of sentimentality, as Bergman's invocations of the innocence of childhood often do. Still, though a lot of things in the film don't work, such as a resort to a voiceover commentary on the marriage of Stig and Marta by the conductor Sönderby that feels jarringly out of place when it occurs, To Joy is a long early step toward the mastery of Bergman's later films.