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List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 9780780028715
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0780028716
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: May 25, 2004
Running Time: 108 minutes
Sales Rank: 22933
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: December 23, 1957
Editorial Review:
Description:
Distinguished lawyer Frederik Egerman lives with Anne, his picturesque, young wife, his son Henrik, a forlorn student of the cloth, and Petra, the flirtatious yet sensible maid. One summer evening Frederik takes Anne to see a play starring his former lover Desirée, the veteran actress with an equally seasoned reputation. With her glamorous stage entrance and one inviting smile, she sparks the lives of the parties involved into a game of love and loyalty that barely masks each player's percolating insecurities. Through witty dialogue, theatrical direction, and an ensemble cast, director Ingmar Bergman delivers a raw exhibition of human desire.
Amazon.com:
Ingmar Bergman achieved international stardom with this classic melancholy comedy about the romantic entanglements of three 19th-century couples during a weekend at a country estate. It's exactly what you'd expect from a bedroom farce filtered through the ideas and eyes of Bergman: sharp, serious, pensive, austerely sexy, and ultimately sobering. Still, anyone who thought the Swedish filmmaker was incapable of a little fun has only to watch Bergman's orchestrations of these dangerous liaisons. Prosperous lawyer Fredrik (Gunnar Björnstrand) is married to the comely young Anne (Ulla Jacobsson), who (despite his best efforts) remains a virgin. Henrik (Björn Bjelfvenstam), Fredrik's grown son from a previous marriage, is desperately in love with Anne--and having an affair with the maid (Harriet Andersson)--despite the torturings of his pious soul. When actress Desiree (Eva Dahlbeck), Fredrik's former mistress, breezes into town, Fredrick pays her a visit, only to find himself jealous of her relationship with the piggish Count Malcolm (Jarl Kulle), who just happens to be married to Anne's best friend, the depressed and suicidal Charlotte (Margit Carlqvist); both women have a decided bone to pick with Desiree. All convene at the estate of Desiree's mother for a weekend of confrontations, illicit romance, dinner, dueling, and eventual pairing with the right romantic partner. Bergman winningly conveys the aspects of love among both the young and the old--those who feel they'll live forever and those whose impending mortality colors their actions. Absolutely brilliant and heartfelt, a true cinematic masterpiece. The basis for Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, of 'Send in the Clowns' fame. --Mark Englehart
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A sad farce
An immoral, sexually obsessed troupe: some kind of religious sect of wackos á la Sweden try to find love and live-fulfillment but they look for it in sex -changing and exchanging sex partners in order to find the combination that does the trick, and alas! it fails. A parody of the absurd "make love, not war" 60's-old sentiment.
It could well be read as I did above, however, here's another alternative.
Fathre/son dialogue (The libertine father and the soon to be cleryman ... Read More
Rating: - Good early Bergman
Ingmar Bergman's 1955 comedy Smiles Of A Summer Night (Sommarnattens Leende) was the film that first garnered him international recognition. It would be a couple of years before The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries cemented his reputation as an international film auteur, but looking back on this film, over a half a century later, and half a world away, it only shows how differently tastes in humor can be. Compared to today's better film comedies, this film is both more mature and more puerile in its ... Read More
Rating:  - Tears behind smiles
"Smiles of a Summer Night" was Bergman's last chance. He'd been making films for a decade, and none of them had been a commercial success. His backers were fed up. Unexpectedly, though, "Smiles" was both a box office and critical hit, and immediately afterwards Bergman got the go-ahead to make "The Seventh Seal." The rest is history.
"Smiles" is a very good film, although it has its flaws. It's a bit too long, for example. The first half could've been edited more closely. The musical ... Read More
Rating:  - INGMAR BERGMAN, OPUS 16
***** 1955. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. A prize (Best Poetic Humor!) at Cannes and the Bergman phenomenon started at that moment. This film is a romantic comedy opposing women and men or rather life and death. In SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, men are clearly related to death, just observe the lawyer Egerman playing Russian roulette or his son Henrik trying to commit suicide. Women, on the contrary, are described as solar, filled with life, by the Swedish master. Yes! Such serious and dark themes ... Read More
Rating: - Bergman's First Great Film
This film inaugurated Bergman's remarkably productive period from the mid-50s to the early 70's when he produced an amazing number of outstanding films. A complex romantic comedy with strong farcial elements, Smiles of A Summer Night is quite different from most of Bergman's great films, though there are humorous elements in Wild Strawberries. Quite a few have compared Smiles to A Midsummer's Night's Dream, and this is appropriate. The theme of Smiles, the nature of love, is truly Shakespearean, as is ... Read More
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