Having seen the Musical version of this film, A Little Night Music, several times I watched the movie with one eye on how faithfully it had been adapted and the other as if I were adapting it into a musical and looking for suitable places to 'spot' numbers. On balance I found the adaptation remarkably faithful to Bergman with perhaps the character of Desiree's mother enlarged slightly and all the names and most of the situations retained. Not being so informed about Bergman and his oeuvre as I might be I had somehow formed the impression that he made this light comedy quite some time after and as something of a break from and a contrast to his early dark work like Seventh Seal so I was surprised to read here that Smiles in fact preceded Seal. It should not, of course matter where a given title occurs in a filmmakers catalogue all that should matter is how well he made the film in question. Overall in this case I'd say pretty well. After a slight irritation of the clumsy exposition in which two of the clerks employed by the chief character, lawyer Fredrik Egerman, tell each other (and us) that 1) Fredrik has two tickets for the theatre where the star of the show, Desiree Arnfeld, used to be his mistress and 2) that he will be going with his new wife, Anne, who is half his age and leaving his son, Henrik, by a previous marriage, at home, it settled down into a well observed comedy of manners owing a little to a current American film, Baby Doll, in its central story of a child bride who refuses to consummate the marriage but then spinning off another series of lovers both star-crossed and otherwise. The cast reads like a roll call of the Bergman stock company, Harriet Andersson, Ulla Jacobsson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Eva Dahlbeck etc and not unnaturally they play as an ensemble. As several other people have said here this is as good and as painless an introduction to Bergman as any.
Review of Smiles of a Summer Night
