Day 30: “Smiles of a Summer Night”

Director: Ingmar Bergman 1955
A wonderful film: witty, wise, lusty, sophisticated and beautifully human in its view of love and sex. Made 50 years ago, when Hollywood films still had to show husbands and wives sleeping in separate beds, this is a delightful, turn-of-the-century (20th that is) romp involving myriad couples—some married, some not—who flit from one to the other until all is resolved over the course of a long, magical, sunny Swedish night. Fittingly, the women are far smarter and stronger than the men, who come off as rascally poseurs. Inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Bergman’s film was the basis of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” and the obvious inspiration for Woody Allen’s “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” (1982). Watch the Bergman.