A Lesson in LoveFeature Film, 1954 Elegant marital comedy about a gynaecologist who attempts to win his way back into his wife's affections during a journey to Copenhagen."I went to the premiere of A Lesson in Love. On edge, I paced back and forth in the foyer of the movie theater Röda Kvarn, like a lost soul. Suddenly I could hear from inside the theater one roaring wave of laughter after another. And I said to myself: It's not possible! They are laughing. They are laughing at someting I have created". - Ingmar Bergman |
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Two years earlier, in the lift scene between Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Björnstrand that concludes Waiting Women, Bergman had tried his hand for the first time at the light, sophisticated and witty style that he now expanded to a full scale feature film in A Lesson in Love (using the same two principal actors). Earlier he had lacked any immediate opportunity to develop the style, but following the financial debacle of Sawdust and Tinsel, Carl Anders Dymling at SF once again took Bergman under his wing. The two of them decided that, for a while at least, it might be in their mutual interest to abandon more serious subject matter in favour of lighter, more humorous material, preferably with erotic undertones. A Lesson in Love was the first of three films in this manner. It was followed by Smiles of a Summer Night, Bergman's first international success, and Dreams, his way of expressing his gratitude to Anders Sandrew for financing Sawdust and Tinsel. But other themes were subsequently to take over and dominate Bergman's filmmaking, and he never again returned to this particular light-hearted style.
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