Summer Interlude

Marie, a ballerina, is handed an old diary between rehearsals. It records a summer she spent on an island thirteen years earlier. That summer she met Henrik. The film moves between the present and that summer and explains how she became what she is. Ingmar Bergman directed and wrote with Herbert Grevenius. Maj-Britt Nilsson plays Marie. Bergman considered this the beginning of his own cinema, saying it was the first time he made exactly the film he wanted. The fear of ageing is at the centre. Marie is twenty-eight, and in ballet that is the start of the end; the scene at the makeup mirror is the film's harshest. The island sections were shot in the Stockholm archipelago, and nature takes on a function that continues through his later work: happiness is always in summer and near water. It was made before his international recognition and stayed in shadow for years. Who it is for: viewers curious about early Bergman and films built on memory. Who it is not for: anyone expecting dense dialogue; this is quiet and inward.