Viewers who think Swedish director Ingmar Bergman is only dour and depressing need to see this light-hearted, sophisticated, romantic comedy -- the thinking person's sex comedy. In a small town at the turn of the 20th century, lawyer Fredrik Egerman (Bjornstrand) lives with his ingenue second wife Anne (Jacobsson) and his grownup son from a previous marriage. Anne remains a virgin at 19, though the Egermans have been married two years already. At the theater, Fredrik runs into his former mistress, Desiree (Dahlbeck). He falls in a puddle outside and goes to her place to clean up. Her current lover, Count Malcolm, shows up and discovers Egerman in his nightshirt, and throws him out. Anne flirts with her stepson, who is very confused. In all, there are four couples in the movie, who represent different aspects of love. The characters are more at odds with themselves than one another. This 1955 movie, a cross between French farce and Shakespeare comedy, inspired Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" and Woody Allen's "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy." My favorite line comes from Desiree's elderly mother: "One can never prevent those one loves from making the mistakes they have to; and that's what makes one so TIRED!"
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The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
