The time with Monika

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Movie
German title The time with Monika
Original title Sommaren med Monika
Country of production Sweden
original language Swedish
Publishing year 1953
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 12 (formerly 18)
Rod
Director Ingmar Bergman
script Per Anders Fogelström
production Allan Ekelund
music Erik Nordgren
camera Gunnar Fischer
cut Days Holmberg
Gösta Lewin
occupation

Summer with Monika (Original: Sommaren med Monika ) is in black and white twisted Swedish film drama by Ingmar Bergman in the year 1953 .

action

19 year old Harry works in a wholesale warehouse for glass and porcelain in Stockholm . 17-year-old Monika works in the vegetable market and has problems with her alcoholic father at home. When Monika meets Harry, she sees a way to escape from this world. The adolescents in love swap the dreary world of the big city with the summer fun on an island in the Baltic Sea . Summer will soon be over, however, and before the couple have to return to Stockholm, Monika discovers that she is pregnant. Harry's aunt is getting the two of them married, and Harry is willing to work for and support his family. But the birth of the child makes the problems grow, the young couple is overwhelmed with parenting. When Harry catches Monika in bed with another man one day, the young family falls apart. Monika leaves Harry and her little daughter.

background

Production and film launch

The time with Monika was based on a story by the popular author Per Anders Fogelström , which he expanded into a novel parallel to the production of the film. The shooting took place from July 22nd to October 6th, 1952 in Stockholm, at Råsunda Film Studios in Filmstaden , Solna , and on Sadelöga near the island of Utö . The film started on February 9, 1953 in Sweden, where it ran with great success, and on September 11 of the same year in German cinemas.

While the Swedish censors removed 20 seconds of violent and erotic scenes from the film, the US distributor Hallmark added additional nude shots, shortened the plot and gave the result the title Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl . A similar fate had already befallen one summer (1951) in the USA.

Position in Bergman's film

The time with Monika was Bergman's first film with Harriet Andersson , who would be one of his regular actors until the 1980s.

Bergman also used an effect here for the first time that he called “waking up” the audience by making the audience aware that they were watching a film by breaking between identification and distancing. In a bar scene, Monika turns to the camera and looks directly at it - and the viewer. Bergman: “She's looking at us in a long close-up, unduly long at the time. […] That was forbidden at the time. ”The fictitious film tear in Persona (1966) and the title text in Die Hour des Wolfs (1968), repeated in the middle of the film, fulfilled the same function .

Reviews

Despite praise for Harriet Andersson's portrayal, the Swedish press accused Bergman of “cliché” and Monika's drawing, which was more negative than the book. In France, Die Zeit with Monika triggered the opposite reactions: Jean-Luc Godard called it “the most original film by this most original of all directors”, François Truffaut declared it his Bergman favorite.

The German film critic Gunter Groll, on the other hand, sums up: "In short, it will be quite long for us, the time with this yawning Monika ... a shame about the talented camera and the talented actress."

The lexicon of international films summarized in retrospect: “A neo-realistic style staged story about self-realization, sexual freedoms, social constraints and individual failure, presented with sympathy for the outsider. Occasionally pathetic tones flow into the morally free story with a pessimistic mood. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The time with Monika on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation , accessed on July 9, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b The time with Monika in the lexicon of international filmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  3. ↑ The time with Monika on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation , accessed on July 9, 2012. The owner of the Hallmark rental company was not Jack Thomas, as it erroneously stated, but Howard "Kroger" Babb.
  4. ↑ Eric Schaefer: Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, Duke University Press, Durham (North Carolina) 1999, ISBN 0-8223-2374-5 .
  5. ↑ The said shot is not a large, but a close-up , possibly a translation error.
  6. ^ Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima: Bergman on Bergman, Fischer, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24478-1 , pp. 191-192 and 242-244.
  7. ↑ Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , pp. 95-97.
  8. ↑ Gunter Groll in Lights and Shadows / Films during this time , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1953, p. 19