Juninatten

JUNE NIGHT / Sweden 1940 (2.5 STARS) 16 December 2003: Through the divine Ingrid Bergman is at her prettiest best (we can see why she was lured away to Hollywood very soon after this her last film in Sweden), I could not understand her character's motivations in this film. . Mise-en-scene: The film starts dramatically with a shoot-out and the rehabilitation that follows. There is intensity in the character's motivations and her crisis is real. I was amazed at how modern Stockholm was way back in 1940. . The Stockholm community, though lovable has been created more with an eye to theatrical platitudes than to portray real people. Despite this we enjoy their little shenanigans and feel for their individual wants. But by the time we get to the end, we no longer feel the connect with any of the lead characters. It is not so much the fact that we despise Bergman's character for the choices she make as it is a lack of the director's ability to build a real person with real motivations - good or bad. . Cinematography, Editing & Sound: In contrast with Casablanca made only two years later, the technical finesse is lacking and the sound and editing look more rookie, though none of that stopped me from wondering at how modern Swedish cinematic language was at that time when few other nations were ready to experiment with morality quite in the same way as were the Swedish, way back in the 1930s.