Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28144 in DVD
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Swedish
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 96 minutes

Amazon.com
Released in 1953, Monika, an early Ingmar Bergman-directed melodrama, did much to establish the reputation of Swedish cinema, and perhaps Swedish women in general, as leading the vanguard in sexual liberation. The film attracted the wrath of the censors and one scene of lovemaking had to be cut. While subsequent generations will look at the film and wonder whatever the fuss was about, it retains a vivid and frolicsome sensuality, before submitting to the inevitable Bergman bleakness.

The film tells the story of a young couple, Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (18-year-old Harriet Andersson, with whom Bergman would fall in love), stuck in lousy jobs in Stockholm. Harry is beset by parental responsibility--his mother died young and his father is ill--while Monika is fed up with her drunken, violent father. They escape in a motorboat to spend a blissful summer on an island in the archipelago. Once Monika gets pregnant and they're forced to steal food, however, the idyll concludes and they return to Stockholm, where the relationship disintegrates. Visually ravishing, Monika would have a deep impact on French New Wave cinema. --David Stubbs

Customer Reviews

Sommaren med Monika
This 1953 film is available on region free Tartan DVD from amazon.co.uk as "Summer with Monika" (almost directly translated from the original title "Sommaren med Monika".) It's an OK edition, worth obtaining especially for Bergman fans. The film is also available on NTSC VHS as "Monika." Renaming the title of this film yet another time as "Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl" is just ridiculous. Even if the studio that will provide this DVD is going to be Criterion, I will certainly have to think twice whether or not I want "Bergman's Story of Monika the Bad Girl" on my bookshelf...who the hell is handing out these additional/optional movie titles over 50 years in retrospect, anyway...?
Aside from unaccredited roles in past Ingmar Bergman films, Harriet Andersson is introduced in a leading role alongside Lars Ekborg (both in their twenties playing 17 year old Monika and 19 year old Harry.) As often in Bergman's films the story has a deeper meaning than its basic plot, and has a stable shifting of multiple emotion. This is also one of few Bergman films to feature so many beautiful Swedish archipelago images. Among his better from the early era.

What Once Binds Also Cleaves
This look at the drives and needs of teenagers on the cusp of adulthood has many facets. The most interesting is its examination of the forces that drive people together.

The need for independence, for affection, for acceptance drives Monika into the arms of Harry. He provides these needs and they run off together.

As the story progresses Monika discovers she has given up one cage for another, one of her own making. In finding this she does what she knows best - runs away.

The transformation of Monika from a fresh faced young teenager at the beginning of the film to a woman whose inner ugliness is beginning to shine through is one of the great character developments on film.

wonderful movie
This is a beautiful film about youth and love and loss. The acting is great. Harriet Anderson as Monika is gorgeous. The Swedish title translates as "A Summer with Monika." No doubt the Puritan American censors had to put "bad girl" in the American version's original 1955 title to keep up their record of stupid hypocrisy. One of my favorite Bergman pictures.