MONIKA Movie Review

Summer with Monika

Teenagers Harry and Monika (Lars Ekborg and Harriet Andersson), one an errand boy and the other a beautiful shopgirl, run away together for the summer and find that the winter brings more responsibility than they can handle when Monika becomes pregnant and gives birth. That changes the family dynamic, so to speak, because before long Monika decides that she's just not cut out for motherhood. This OK early Ingmar Bergman film achieved a reputation beyond its quality, primarily because of Harriet Andersson's nude scenes. Monika was imported to America in a dubbed version that played both art theatres and commercial houses, with ad campaigns to match. (For the dubbed runs here, Erik Nordgren's original score was stripped off and replaced by some supposedly hot ‘n’ sassy licks laid down by Les Brown and his Band of Renown.) Monika (also known as Summer with Monika) wasn't considered a lascivious item in the U.S.alone; in Truffaut's The 400 Blows, little Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) can be seen swiping stills from the film from the front of a Parisian movie house.

NEXT STOP … Illicit Interlude, Through a Glass Darkly, Sawdust and Tinsel

1952 96m/B SW Harriet Andersson, Lars Ekborg, John Harryson, Georg Skarstedt, Dagmar Ebbesen, Ake Gronberg; D: Ingmar Bergman; W: Ingmar Bergman; M: Les Baxter. VHS HMV, CVC, TPV