Summer Interlude: The Criterion Collection

Summer Interlude: The Criterion Collection

Touching on many of the themes that would define the rest of his legendary career-isolation, performance,

the inescapability of the past-the tenth film by Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) was a gentle

sway toward true mastery. In one of the director's great early female roles, Maj-Britt Nilsson

beguiles as Marie, an accomplished ballet dancer haunted by her tragic youthful affair with a shy, handsome

student (Birger Malmsten). Her memories of the 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 is a

reverie on life and death that bridges the gap between Bergman's past and future, theater and cinema.