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Bergman's Most Popular Film...?June 18, 2009 ...An opinionated question, of course, but one that any cinephile would certainly have any answer for. They might say, oh, The Seventh Seal or The Virgin Spring or Smiles of a Summer Night or Scenes from a Marriage (which is technically a TV production, but it could still make the list) or any one of a half-dozen others. But how many Stateside cinephiles would reply with the 1953 film Summer with Monika? Now don't get me wrong -- starring Harriet Andersson and Lars Ekborg, it's a fine film about a summer romance between a teenaged guy and a slightly younger and quite lively young lady. But his most popular? I don't think so.But that's what I read in an in-flight movie magazine on an SAS airplane that I was on as I traveled to my recent vacation in Stockholm, Sweden. According to the write-up, Summer with Monika - which was one of the films available for viewing on the flight - is "the Bergman film that most people have seen in America." I found that a little hard to believe so I took a quick look at the IMDB when I returned home as part of my preliminary research to see what this was all about. And what do you think I found? How about this little tidbit in the trivia section: "The film's then ground-breaking nudity led to its American distributor snapping up the film sight unseen and marketing it along the lines of a Russ Meyer picture. It remains the most widely seen Ingmar Bergman film in the US." So, leave it to the ole IMDB to provide editorial copy for Scandinavia's leading airline! Oh, and another Bergman film was also available on the flight, but I guess it wasn't popular enough to be listed first. Perhaps you've heard of it: A little film called Fanny and Alexander, which received four Oscars back in 1983 including one for Best Foreign Language film? Nah, I didn't think you knew that one either. Posted by Laurence Lerman on June 18, 2009 | Comments (1) 
June 19, 2009
In response to: Bergman's Most Popular Film...? Griff commented: Well, it's entirely possible that more people <i>paid</i> to see SUMMER WITH MONIKA (or MONIKA, as it was frequently popularly titled) in America than any other Bergman picture. Several exploitation distributors and states' rights releasing organizations kept a dubbed, streamlined version of this in near constant release during the '50s and early '60s.
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