Summer Interlude

Many consider the first real "Bergman film" to be Sawdust and Tinsel (aka The Naked Night), but I would argue that this film from a couple of years earlier is really the film in which he came into his own. It's about an aging ballerina (artist character), hiding behind layers of makeup, who begins to recount the summer in her youth when she was happy and in love. Most of the film, as the title would imply, is the flashback. She meets a shy young man while vacationing by a lake, who is the perfect example of youthful innocence and quickly falls in love with her. Bergman, particularly in his early work, was so good at these kind of love stories in which youth, beauty, and love are contrasted with loss, death, and the corruption of the human heart. It's sad but sweet, and Bergman manages to mix those elements with his usual care and grace.