Summer with Monika

Girl meets boy, girl persuades boy to run away with her, girl gets bored and leaves boy holding the baby.

This may not be the usual Hollywood formula, but it is the plot of Ingmar Bergman's 1952 film, Summer with Monika.  The film was offered last night as the first in a series of nine Bergman films, to be shown weekly in chronological order, by the Seattle Art Museum.

Monika and Harry meet while employed by the same Stockholm company.  Harry, a shy lad of 19, has a dead end job in the shipping department.  Monika, 17, essentially woos Harry, and eventually persuades him that they should run away from their jobs and motor around Sweden on his indulgent father's tiny, live-aboard motor boat.  I was never quite clear where their money (or gasoline) came from, but they spend a blissful summer together camping and living off the land. 

As fall approaches,Monika reveals she is expecting a blessed event.  The Swedish weather is becoming colder, and the couple have run out of food and money.  After a desperate attempt to scavenge -- Monika steals a family's roast off their table before their very eyes -- Harry discusses returning to the city, and getting married.  He proposes studying engineering (more like technical training) in order to support the family.

Monika at first is entranced, but then refuses to return to city life.  She also complains bitterly about the hardships of living on the boat.  Harry tries to find out what she does want to do, but she screams that she now hates living on the boat and she refuses to return to the city.  Then what does she want?  "I don't want anything!" she yells bursting into tears.

Finally, she agrees to Harry's plan.  The couple gets married, Harry goes to class daily, and Monika (with the help of Harry's aunt) cares for the baby.  Actually, the aunt cares for the baby during the day, and Harry spends the night up with the crying child.  Things come to a head when Monika uses the rent money to buy new clothes for herself.  The rent can wait; I want to have fun, she argues.  Shortly afterward, she walks out of the apartment, and out of Harry's life, leaving Harry cuddling the baby and daydreaming of the happy times they spent together during the summer.

Movie's a bit of a downer, at least from my male perspective, but Bergman's black and white cinematography -- scenes of urban life, scenes of nature, close ups of Monika's troubled and changing face -- is stunning. 

No one had heard of Bergman when the film was released in America in 1953.  The distributer publicized it as the story of a "bad girl."  "The devil controls her by radar," read the lurid posters.  To the contrary, the film is a tragic story of marriage between an immature young girl and a boy who is serious, loving, and conscientious -- but far too dull for the girl he married.