Smiles of a Summer Night

Stunning! How poetic. This is the first Bergman I really loved, the first time I could see what Woody Allen has been raving about all these decades. I liked Wild Strawberries all right, but it was still too grim and severe for my tastes. Smiles of a Summer Night is apparently one of Bergman's rare lighter pieces, and by his own admission, an itch he scratched and promptly got rid of. Nevertheless, I'm ecstatic about this movie. Nothing exciting happens, and mostly it goes along at a tame pace, but I think that's what makes that comic ending so articulate and important. I love happy endings, especially when there's poetry too.

“The summer night has three smiles,” one character says to his lover. The first comes “between midnight and dawn, when young lovers open their hearts and loins.” The second smile is for “the jesters, the fools and the incorrigible.” And the third smile is for “the sad and dejected, for the sleepless and lost souls, for the frightened and the lonely.”