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Smiles of A Summer Night

Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Sweden • 1955 • 103 mins. • In Swedish

Showtimes & Past Screenings

The inspiration for Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Steven Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, Bergman’s Smiles is an erotic, nostalgic jab at upper-class sexual repression and marital dysfunction. At a turn-of-the-century country estate, eight men and women—invited for a summer weekend—embark on frenzied rounds of sexual intrigue and deception as they variously pair off, break up, and exchange partners. Inspired by Mozart, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Renoir’s Rules of the Game, Bergman’s light-hearted but sophisticated boudoir farce, featuring such Swedish screen legends as Gunnar Björnstrand and Harriet Andersson, remains one of cinema’s great erotic comedies. In Swedish with English subtitles.

Genres: Comedy

Appears in: Ingmar Bergman: A Centenary Celebration

The Northwest Film Center recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence.