Summer with Monika

A tale of passionate but doomed love, and an escape from reality into a dream that gradually fades. This is the film that marked the beginning of the Bergman we love.

Young lovers flee from civilization into the embrace of pristine Scandinavian nature. Their days are filled with freedom and spontaneity; the couple revels in each other and their overflowing youth. They have nowhere to rush to—time melts in the sun, flowing like slow syrup, and the idyllic world they’ve created together seems safe and eternal. For now…

Then everything collapses, including the fourth wall of the screen. At the very end, just before reluctantly and doomedly sleeping with her former lover, disregarding all cinematic laws, Monika looks straight into the camera, into the eyes of the viewer. It is a well-known statement by Jean-Luc Godard, who rightly called this scene "the saddest shot in the history of cinema."