Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

Not rated, but the movie does get pretty bleak.  I mean, it's a Bergman movie. The movie embraces the concept of adultery and runs with it.  Some of the fallout involves suicide attempts and a game of Russian Roulette.  And this is in a comedy.  It's all very dour and bleak.  It's a dark comedy, emphasis on "dark".

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman

I've officially started my 39 film Bergman run.  Again, there are so many feelings about owning the Bergman box set.  A guy I worked with at the video store loved Ozu, but admitted that he'd never have a handle on Ozu.  There was a tinge of mournfulness and shame with that comment because he felt like he was undeserving of watching Ozu.  I'm kind of the same way about Bergman. For the most part, I enjoy Bergman movies.  But I also don't understand them at all.  There's also an irresponsibility on my part assuming that I can understand them or feel like I have the right to critique them, even if I acknowledge that I'm writing exclusively about my feelings in regards to the movie.  Still, this box set is one of the most beautiful things that I own.  I'm paradoxically enthusiastic and overwhelmed by this endeavor.

I'm kind of glad that they gave us Smiles of a Summer Night to start the whole Bergman fiasco.  Criterion gives a non-chronological look at his entire ouevre, which is kind of fun.  Smiles of a Summer Night is a good start to Bergman, especially if you don't know much about the man.  Bergman can get dense.  It's not that Smiles of a Summer Night is simplistic.  If anything, it's potentially the most complex romantic comedy I can think of.  It's just...easier?  I'm still going to get it wrong. Part of it is that Ingmar Bergman, in his very criticism of the aristocracy, frustrates me with the re-definition of love.  Here's all of th ways that I'm a hypocrite.  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's treatise on the fickleness of love, is one of my favorite plays.  I'm obsessed with Ernst Lubitsch, who cut his teeth on taking down the upper crust in his romantic comedies.  Yet, with Bergman, I find myself depressed with his take on how fickle love is amongst the financially well-off.

Part of that comes from the need to apply the story to myself.  In Smiles, no one is in love with the person that they are with.  Instead, true romance almost seems to stem out of the forbidden and the hunt for something greater.  It's a real bummer.  I mean, this is a comedy, but this is a Bergman romantic comedy.  Before I go too deep into some of the takes on love, I have to voice my frustration that Bergman himself labels this movie a romantic comedy.  It's not that it's not funny. (Okay, it's not all that funny.) It's just that some of Bergman's dramas are funnier than this movie.  Bergman, as dour as the man gets, tells jokes.  They're great jokes.  Smiles of a Summer Night is a comedy in the precepts definition of comedy.  It ends in weddings.  Coupled with the way that the film is shot compared to a lot of the other Bergman outings, I get why it is sold as a comedy. But the jokes honestly don't really start until the final act and even then...a chuckle.  

Okay, back to the idea of not loving the one you are with.  I don't love the assumptions that the conflict in romantic movies involves already being in a relationship with someone.  I don't know why there has to be a physical external manifestation of an internal conflict when we could just point out that characters have reserves about relationships.  Bergman takes it to a new level though.  Every relationship in Smiles is almost a parody of what rom-com relationships come from.   Egerman centers the film and he's the most unlikable character in the movie.  He starts with a truly sympathetic trait.  He's a widower and that's already enough to start a rom-com.  But every thing that Egerman does is incredibly frustrating.  (I tend to not like when people complain about none of the characters being likable and I'm doing the same thing.) Egerman has a wife far too young and innocent for him.   He doesn't seem to love her so much as treats her like an acquired prize.  She's the trophy wife, a younger woman for an older man. Then we find out that Egerman has been sleeping around for a significantly longer time than we've been aware of.  After all, there's the implication that he has a child that he was unaware of.

The oddity of Egerman's conflict doesn't come from the fact that he might lose the much more moral woman --his wife --to a woman who is also sleeping around.  The issue comes from the fact that his mistress is being also treated like a possession by another, more toxic married man.  Like, I get it.  Bergman isn't an idiot.  This is all meticulously set up to be frustrating.  It doesn't change the fact that I'm incredibly frustrated with the whole thing. But the kicker comes from the fact that no one treats each other properly.  First of all, Egerman doesn't sleep with his wife Anne for no reason outside of the fact that he thinks that he is preserving her innocence.  Meanwhile, there's the issue with his son.  Bergman isn't exactly subtle about his relationship with the religious.  I would say that Henrik is pitiable and sympathetic, but that's not really true. My least favorite character in the movie is Henrik. Henrik is a seminarian, but there isn't anything fundamentally religious about him.  Again, Bergman isn't an idiot.  He's more commenting on the social respect that the clergy get in society.  But Henrik is this Harry Osborn kind of guy.  He's mad about everything, but can't vocalize his wants and desires in a reasonable way.

It makes it all really frustrating that every woman is fighting for these bottom-feeding men. That might be where the movie loses me.  The movie spoon-feeds the relationships that Bergman is trying to set up.  Egerman is going to end up with his mistress Desiree (a name that's a bit on the nose), Malcolm (who've I've not even mentioned)  ends up with his wife, Henrik ends up with Anne (his stepmother who has not consummated her relationship with her husband).  But none of these men deserve anything.  They're all fundamentally unlikable.  The only character who is mildly likable is Anne, but that kind of stops when we find out that she's attracted to her stepson, who for the sake of legality, is an adult and probably closer in age to herself than she is to her husband.

But honestly, Anne and Henrik have the most shippable relationship.  AND I GET IT!  This isn't about shipping people.  But does Bergman need to go this hard into a story about summer romances.  I honestly don't like any of them.  The world is a selfish place full of selfish people.  I don't necessarily need to hear that all of the time from Bergman.  Can I be really honest?  This all might be coming from a conflict between expectations and acceptance, but in a way, this is the bleakest Bergman story.  One thing that I always like about Bergman is that he can present the most dour and upsetting stories.  But there are moments where my heart is warmed.   While humanity and joy are fleeting in other stories, they are present.  Even in The Seventh Seal, there are a lot of tender moments.  Even the actual chess game, as much as it is a potential game of fate, the joy of playing Death himself is seen in the protagonist.  This story?  Everything is misery.  People are cruel to each other because they are selfish.  I don't know if that's the world I want for an entire film.  No one really cares about another person, with the exception of Anne.  But even with Anne, it comes across as a little bit pathetic. 

And it's not that I even full on disliked Smiles of a Summer Night.  It all comes back to the fact that I wanted something joyful.  Not joyful throughout.  But joyful regardless.  My stomach can't let go of the fact that no one in this story is going to end up truly happy. The only people who will experience any kind of joy are the people who are apathetic to their relationships with others.  The maid that Henrik loses his virginity to, she's so laissez-faire that it almost seems like an act.  What fun is that?  Nothing really has meaning?  I don't know.  I know that I'm begging for an Ingmar Bergman movie to be lighter.  But I just want some happiness.

I'm so sorry that I'm going to be writing about these movies a lot.  Again, they are great films.  But I would like to think that I'm more optimistic than this.