ONE SUMMER OF HAPPINESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 786, 13 August 1954, Page 22

ONE SUMMER OF HAPPINESS

(Nordisk Tonefilm-G.C.T.) EW recent films from Scandinavia have been screened in New Zealand, but those we have had, like Miss Julie and Frenzy (the latter seen here only by film societies), have shown how superlatively good their best work is. One Summer of Happiness also is something rather special. It may not go as deep as the other two, and its story may be less out of the ordinary, but what it has attempted it has done so beautifully and well that you won't forget it. A young student named Goran (Folke Sundquist) spends the summer at the farm of his Uncle Anders (Edvin -Adolphson). He helps with the farm work, he joins happily in the dances and theatricals of a group of young people who have broken away from the joyless, puritan way of life of their elders, and he falls in love with Kerstin (Ulla Jacobsson), a girl from a near-by farm. Between a beginning, and an end in the present, the story of this happy suminer is told as Goran remembers it. More than anything else it is a story of young love, but of young love blighted by narrow religious beliefs that would leave no room for joy in the world, You might think it a story of reckless love, captured in the muchpublicised nude bathing and love scene (which, by the way, is so beautifully done that it will disturb only the puritans). Well, that may be true, too, but then wasn’t love always a little reckless? I hope, anyway, that many will feel, as ‘| I did, that the speech towards the end of the film in which the liberal Uncle Anders underlines the "point" of the story was not really necessary. Now don’t imagine that because it brings to life several sets of values (some pleasure-loving city youths come into it, too), the film is a solemn piece about the rights of youth. No doubt a few will go even further and work it out as an allegory, which would make an interesting exercise. But most of us still go to the films for the story and, hand on heart, I want to assure you that if you go for nothing more you will find this one interesting to the end. The love story is beautifully played, and there are, besides the characters I’ve

mentioned, several others of interestAnders’s sister (who, in a moving little scene, reveals how life has passed her by), a simpleton, and, most important, the minister (John Elfstrom), a central figure throughout the film who fights savagely for the old order. I don’t know how the director (Arne Mattsson) and the photographer (Goran Strindberg) have shared the telling of the story, but since Strindberg (a grandson, by the way, of the great playwright) photographed Miss Julie in a strikingly similar style, I think we can give him full marks for his work on this film. Breathtaking is a word that should be used sparingly, but One Summer of Happiness is a film of breathtaking beauty. Camera angles and camera movements are exciting, there’s a wondetful eye for detail, and the final shot is one you must wait to see even if you have to run to catch your tram.

BAROMETER FINE: "One Summer of Happiness."’ FAIR. TO FINE: "The Narrow. Margin MAINLY FAIR: "December Night."