Word: bergman
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Despite his reputation for melancholy films, Bergman actually began his career by making comedies. One of these, "Smiles of a Summer Night," which was released in December of 1955, became Bergman's breakthrough film. Many critics have seen it as the culmination of Bergman's so-called "rose period," during which he made lighter-hearted films. Ostensibly a comedy of manners, "Smiles of a Summer Night" stars Gunnar Bjornstrand as Fredrik Egerman, a successful middle-aged lawyer whose second wife is the virginal 18-year-old Anne (Ulla Jacobsson). As Anne rebuffs Egerman's physical advances, Egerman turns...
...Bergman plays with several different elements in "Smiles of a Summer Night." The film is grounded in the notion of Shakespearean comedy, particularly A Midsummer Night's Dream. The tropes of the husband and wife who are separated and then reunited, the sylvan atmosphere and the magic spells buttress the film. Egerman is very much like Bottom; he plays an ass throughout the movie, but at the end, after Anne has run off with Henrik, he is made human again. The film also contains echoes of Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro and allusions to Jean Renior's classic 1939 film...
...Smiles of a Summer Night" has many funny moments, and the film feels lighter than many of Bergman's other works. However, in true Bergmanesque fashion, the comedy is laced with tragedy and pathos. The epigrams, though elegant and humorous, are capable of wounding. While the characters comply with the structure of a comedy of manners by affirming love and happy endings, they consistently undercut the same structure with theri realization of the futility of all sentiments, most especialy love. The film ends with all the participants coupled, but this highly conventional resolution, required in all classic boudoir farces...
...almost imperceptible line between comedy and pathos in "Smiles of a Summer Night" has helped to make the film an influential classic. Stephen Sondheim based his musical A Little Night Music on it, and Woody Allen, who is one of Bergman's greatest admirers, paid homage to the film in "A Mid-summer Night's Sex Comedy...
Despite the success of his comedy, Bergman didn't dally long in the realms of the humorous. In "The Seventh Seal," which was made after "Smiles of a Summer Night," Bergman turns fuly to the exploration of despair. In this medieval allegory, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a Knight, returns with his squire Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) to Sweden after ten years in the Crusades. Death, played inndibly by Bengt Ekerot, comes to take the Knight, but the Knight, Seeking to win a respite, challenges Death to a game of chess. The Knight and Jons travel the contryside, which is ravaged...