Summer With Monika cover art

Summer With Monika Details

1952 Certificate PG
  • Rated:
  • 70
  • from 1030 members

SUMMER WITH MONIKA is an intense, sensual drama, adapted by Ingmar Bergman from a novel by Per Anders Fogelstrom. In an acclaimed, stellar performance, Harriet Andersson, on her way to becoming a Bergman regular, plays the fiery teenager Monika, and Lars Ekborg is Harry, a sensitive youth who becomes her lover. Together they .. Read more

Starring Harry Anderson, Lars Ekborg, John Harryson, George Skarstedt
Director Ingmar Bergman
Genres Drama, World Cinema

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Summer With Monika cover art

Summer With Monika

SUMMER WITH MONIKA is an intense, sensual drama, adapted by Ingmar Bergman from a novel by Per Anders Fogelstrom. In an acclaimed, stellar performance, Harriet Andersson, on her way to becoming a Bergman regular, plays the fiery teenager Monika, and Lars Ekborg is Harry, a sensitive youth who becomes her lover. Together they escape to a remote island off the coast of Sweden, where they spend a carefree summer exploring nature and giving in to their own passionate instincts. When Monika finds herself pregnant, the young couple is forced to return to the city, where they settle down to a dull domestic life together, with the prospect of a bleak future in a drab working-class environment. The impulsive Monika soon decides she wants more out of life...
Because of the occasionally erotic nature of the material (and Bergman's uninhibited rendering of it), prior to being released in America the movie was edited, retitled MONIKA: THE STORY OF A BAD GIRL, and marketed as a racy sexploitation film by its U.S. distributor, in turn earning the director the disapproval of those who considered the finished product obscene.

Starring Harry Anderson, Lars Ekborg, John Harryson, George Skarstedt
Director Ingmar Bergman
Studio PALISADES TARTAN
Run time DVD: 1 hr 31 mins
Certificate Certificate PG
Genres Drama, World Cinema
Language DVD: Swedish
Subtitles DVD: English
Released DVD: 28 Oct 2002
Production year: 1952
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (3) of Summer With Monika

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  • 5 stars out of 5

    The last of Ingmar Bergman's studies of young love and the alienating effects of city life, this is a masterpiece of contrasting images and emotions. The brilliant, sunlit scenes set on the isolated islands perfectly capture the joy and innocence of summer love, as sassy teenager Harriet Andersson and adoring Lars Ekborg splash in the dappled water and kiss beneath the stars. But Gunnar Fischer's stifling shots of Stockholm are perhaps more impressive, as he sets the visual tone for the gradual drift into disillusionment and desertion. At once idyllic and tragic, this is clearly the work of a master.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006
  • 1 stars out of 4

    Probably truthful but rather glum and unsophisticated drama of young love; not among Bergman's most interesting films.

    • Halliwell's Film Guide
    • Posted 02 Mar 2006

  • Most helpful member's review of Summer With Monika

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  • 3 out of 3 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    This starts as a seductive film were we are bourne along on an escapist dream of you love and lust. The fact that characters are working class means that this is more interesting than its British and American contemporaries. This is no romantic rites of passage. It ends in grim reality

      • Ian#51 from EDINBURGH
      • Posted 01 Apr 2004 15:31

  • Most recent members' review of Summer With Monika

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  • 1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    Summer with Monika

    Two young lovers dream of an idealistic future after the teenage Monika finds herself pregnant whilst the pair are escaping reality for a Summer of love and discovery....

    This black and white film is an interesting insight into working-class life half a century ago and yet, has so much changed after all???

    Worth watching... but do not expect a happy ending ....

      • A customer from Cornwall England
      • Posted 06 Mar 2006 15:58

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    Saraband

    Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

    • 31 Jul 2007

    See the entire LOVEFiLM Bergman Collection here Checkmate. Death has finally taken the great Swedish master, Ingmar Bergman, as he always knew it must. No filmmaker wrestled longer and more painfully with the knowledge of his own mortality. His father was a severe Lutheran minister, and a figure who cast a long shadow over Bergman's films, including his premature swansong, Fanny and Alexander (1982), and perhaps his purest masterpiece, Winter Light (1962), a portrait of a pastor who has lost... Read more

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      • SUMMER WITH MONIKA is an intense, sensual drama, adapted by Ingmar Bergman from a novel by Per Anders Fogelstrom. In an acclaimed, stellar performance, Harriet Andersson, on her way to becoming a ...