Tuesday, December 29, 2015

SUMMER WITH MONIKA



This is an Ingemar Bergman film from 1953.The section shown in the clip above is amazing in how long it lingers on the romance of a brief summer when their relationship worked. The movie is a good warning for not getting swept away at eighteen by lust. When a baby comes, Monika is not up to it.And the summer's hot romance ends sadly. A nineteen year old boy will take on responsibilities he may not be up to.Gritty, romantic, realistic. This one has it all. How few movies manage to capture both the romance and the gritty reality at home.

12 comments:

Deb said...

Certainly, in those days if you got pregnant you got married regardless of your compatibility or readiness for a family. I do like these early Bergman movies--they're a bit lighter than those really deep ones from the 1960s & 70s, although still with some dark themes.

Jeff Meyerson said...

I must admit, I don't know this one. I really prefer black & white. I've been watching some of the noir movies TCM ran this summer and they look great.

Deb is right. A friend of my brother's had to drop out of school, get married, and go to work at his father's store when his girlfriend got pregnant (this was probably the mid-to-late 1960's) and I've always wondered if it worked out for them. We knew several people (one friend of Jackie's in particular) who had "scares" at the time.

What amazed me years later was finding out how many people in my grandparents' generation had abortions, some several times. And they were very casual about it. The time period was probably the 1920's.

Deb said...

I hesitate to broach this topic because it conflates so many deeply-held beliefs on both sides of the argument, but if you look back in family histories and see a female relative who "just died" or suddenly stopped having children (although continuing to be married and of child-bearing age), it's generally the result of a botched abortion. One of my great-grandmothers was quite open about aborting herself with a crochet needle (yikes!); another great aunt died suddenly at 27--no one knew why, but there were always family whispers. Incidentally, there's a woman on trial in Indiana right now for aborting herself with a coat hanger. If you had told me in the 1970s that we'd be right back where we had been forty years later, I would have laughed!

Deb said...

Let me clarify--I would have laughed with disbelief, not because it's a funny topic.

Jeff Meyerson said...

I wish I remember where I saw it, but there was a documentary this guy made about the death of his mother (who had a couple of kids) after a botched abortion. As an adult he did the story on it, which included pictures of her on the sleazy motel room floor where she died. At least that's the way I remember it. She was older, did not want to have more kids that she couldn't afford to bring up, etc. I also remember VERA DRAKE with the great Imelda Staunton.

All these loudmouths who have always lived under Roe v. Wade have no idea of what this country was like before that. Clearly, with this and their other proposals, the Republican Party wants to take us back to those ugly days of yore when the world was more to their liking - not so many uppity women and minorities.

/climbs off Deb's soapbox

pattinase (abbott) said...

There is almost nothing mentioned about a way out of this. In fact, she at first seems moderately okay with it. Not until she's saddled with childcare does she show her horrible side. You will feel no sympathy for her. For him, very much.

Jeff Meyerson said...

OK, I remembered it but not accurately (the documentary).

Gerri Santoro.

She had two daughters, not sons, and though her sister saw the picture it was an independent filmmaker who made the documentary.

Walker Martin said...

Bergman's one of my big favorites. I first got hooked on his movies in the late 1950's and early 1960's when the local PBS station showed them on TV. When I retired from work, I managed to get all his movies on dvd or VHS and I watched one each morning. A lot of fun but depressing also!

pattinase (abbott) said...

I think I have seen over half of them. And many more than once.

Todd Mason said...

I need to watch it again...I've seen only the cut released on VHS in the US as MONKA, and thought it at the time the only Bergman film I found slight and unengaging. I suspect a bad cut, and perhaps I was in a bad mood. Almost 20 years ago, as well.

pattinase (abbott) said...

If you want to like your female character, it will annoy you!

Todd Mason said...

That's usually not the first thing I look for.