Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video (both):

Audio (both):

• A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Peter Cowie

• Shares the Blu-ray with To Joy

Bitrate:

 

Description: Touching on many of the themes that would define the rest of his legendary career—isolation, performance, the inescapability of the past—Ingmar Bergman’s tenth film was a gentle drift toward true mastery. In one of the director’s great early female roles, Maj-Britt Nilsson beguiles as an accomplished ballet dancer haunted by her tragic youthful affair with a shy, handsome student (Birger Malmsten). Her memories of the sunny, rocky shores of Stockholm’s outer archipelago mingle with scenes from her gloomy present, most of them set in the dark backstage environs of the theater where she works. A film that the director considered a creative turning point, Summer Interlude (Sommarlek) is a reverie about life and death that unites Bergman’s love of theater and cinema.

 

 

Told in flashback as the memories of a ballerina approaching the end of her career, this sensitively observed story traces a teenage love affair which took place one idyllic summer on the archipelago near Stockholm. Bergman's preoccupation with the transition from youthful innocence to adult experience is already clearly marked here, as is the double movement of a journey backward into one's own past which nevertheless marks a spiritual progression. For it is through her re- living of her past that the heroine comes to embrace the tentative possibilities for her future. The translation of the title, incidentally, is incorrect and misleading. Sommarlek means Summer Games, and Bergman's concern is with the transience of playful youth.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

1) Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray TOP 2) Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region FREE Blu-ray - BOTTOM

 

 

Audio remains authentic via a linear PCM mono track at 1152 kbps. Dialogue is clear and audible. Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" sounded clean if not dynamic and crisp. There are English subtitles and my Momitsu has identified it as being a region 'A'-locked like all Criterion Blu-rays to date.

Audio is the same, technically, and as far as my ears can tell, but the Ingmar Bergman's Cinema Blu-ray set is Region FREE!

Extras :

Even Criterion are paring back the expense of supplements and Summer Interlude offers only a liner notes booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Peter Cowie.

Also this has no extras although there is an entire extra Blu-ray and book in the Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema 100th Anniversary 30 Blu-ray Boxset. It shares the disc with To Joy.

Criterion (original) - Region 'A' Blu-ray

Criterion (Ingmar Bergman's Cinema) - Region 'A' Blu-ray

 

BOTTOM LINE:
I was quickly reminded of Summer With Monika - that I watched very recently perhaps because of the impressive exterior shots - rock terrain and water.  I liked Summer Interlude and will definitely be watching it again. I found it is a beautiful and poignant film experience. We give the Criterion Blu-ray an essential recommendation to Bergman fans but I can see appeal to a broader range of world cinema devotees as well.

 

This is another positive endorsement Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema Set. Many transfers are notable upgrades. 

Gary Tooze

May 14th, 2012

October 18th, 2018