Treated myself last night to the restoration of Bergman's "Monika" at the IFC. It apparently hasn't been seen much for the last 50 years, and prints weren't considered very good. I haven't seen a lot of Bergman - about a half dozen of his - what? - 4,000 films? - but the ones I've seen I see over and over. The man could make the Gristede's on 103rd St look like an Old Master painting.
"Monika" concerns two young Swedish kids - Harriet Andersson and Lars Ekborg - who run away from their dreary lives and take up on an abandoned boat. They fall in love, have a lot of sex, and then realize they don't have any food and they're getting kind of dirty living on a boat and summer is over. They move back to town, he studies engineering, she has a baby and life grinds them into dust. She turns into a selfish bitch, and he's stuck at the end living with his dad again and taking care of the kid.
So - what makes this worth watching?
Bergman - God, he was good - can take the simplest story, load it with humanity, fill every frame with life and turn loss into something that makes your heart swell, a piece of music, a naked poem about the true price of growing up. His films have a rap of being depressing, but I find them exhilarating. Even this one - for whatever reason classified as a minor work - has truth, humor, and wonder.
Plus, Andersson is a vision and Ekborg looks for all the world like Chet Baker at his moment of maximum hotness.
My charming date - who'd never seen a Bergman flick before - was into it.
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