Film
Summer with Monika
- Director
- Ingmar Bergman
- Certificate
- PG
- Running Time
- 97 mins
Irresponsible teenage Monika (Harriet Andersson) enjoys a summer romance with a clerk (Lars Ekborg) during an island holiday and gets knocked up. Misery ensues in Ingmar Bergman‘s then-scandalous, non-judgemental yarn, which benefits from terrific performances by its young leads.
Fascinating trivia note: this is the only Bergman film ever to play in American porn cinemas. No, really. US filth merchant Kroger Babb, who styled himself ‘Mr. Pihsnamwohs’ (geddit?) particularly enjoyed a two-minute sequence in which Ms. Andersson took her clothes off and went for a swim. So he snapped up the US rights, trimmed the film to 62 minutes, dubbed it into ‘American English’, ditched the solemn Swedish score in favour of something more upbeat, retitled it Monika, Story of a Bad Girl, and shoved it out into the sex cinemas with an extraordinary exploitation campaign (“A picture for wide screens and broad minds”). FYI this more racy version is now available on DVD from the high-minded Criterion Collection.
https://youtu.be/GcGLibSRPeY
Bergman’s original version is back on screen in the Watershed’s Celebrating Ingmar Bergman season marking the centenary of the great Swedish director’s birth.
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