Smiles Of A Summer Night Details

Ingmar Bergman's sprightly comedy of sexual manners has a distinguished lineage, inspired as it is by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the operas of Mozart, the plays of Marivaux and Mauritz Stiller's film Erotikon. Its progeny includes Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy. Bergman's comedies can be laboured and precious, but here he strikes exactly the right note of levity. Led by Eva Dahlbeck as the mischievous actress who assembles a weekend party of past, present and prospective lovers, the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent.

Comedy of high period manners with an admirable detached viewpoint and elegant trappings. It later formed the basis of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, a stage musical which was later filmed.