[Sommarnattens leende, Das Lächeln einer Sommernacht]

SE 1955, R: Ingmar Bergman mit Gunnar Björnstrand, Ulla Jacobsson, Björn Bjelfvenstam, 109 Min, OmeU

One of the cinema's great erotic comedies.

The plot is an Ophulsian ronde of love affairs and intrigues revolving around a middle-aged lawyer; his young wife who remains a virgin; his former mistress, a sophisticated stage actress; her lover, and his wife. They gather for a weekend at the country estate of the actress's elderly mother, who works a kind of magic on this ménage of infinite possibilities. A true parody of the ridiculous male, this is a comic working-out of an idea suggested so tragically in other Bergman films—that men are a species of beast who turn to women to save them from being totally humiliated. Not always a smart move. Woody Allen brilliantly reworked Smiles of a Summer Night in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, and the film also inspired the Broadway play A Little Night Music.