From concept to screenplay 

Photo: Louis Huch
© AB Svensk Filmindustri

The period around 1950 was a difficult time for Ingmar Bergman. In 1949 his contract with the Gothenburg Municipal Theatre ran out, and with it his principal source of income. Together with his regular film producer Lorens Marmstedt he attempted to revive a theatre company (Intima Teatern), but it went into receivership following two fiasco productions (Brecht's Threepenny Opera and a double bill of Hjalmar Bergman's A Shadow and Jean Anouilh's Medea). On top of all this, the Swedish film industry was in conflict with the government over the high rate of tax on entertainment, a situation which culminated in 1951 with a lockout and a one year stop in film production. This merely added to Bergman's financial problems. In his personal life, chaos reigned: in 1949 he left his wife and children and escaped to Paris with his lover who subsequently became pregnant. He divorced and married Gun Hagberg, who "had no work, and now I had three families to support." "In my grief," Bergman recalls, "I wrote a film script which was given the title Summer Interlude". The basis of the storyline dates back to the young Bergman's earliest attempts in prose. Immediately after graduating from high school he fell ill and spent his time writing "just for the fun of it, and it was firmly intended to be kept in the drawer." As the outside world fell in turmoil (just before the outbreak of the second world war) he wanted to write about something cheerful by way of a counter balance. His themes were "Summer Holiday in the Archipelago" and "First Love". In an interview with Fritiof Billquist, Bergman describes how his ideas developed:

"Then the Latin exercise book in which I wrote the story disappeared, and lots of other things happened: There were torments, crises, women without faces and the devil and his grandmother and sturm und drang, all mixed up.

One day the Latin exercise book turned up, and the pearls shone just as brightly as before. War and winter were long past.

That's when the idea for the film emerged. I was going to make a film, turn the pearls into cash. Marie (as the story was called) would look after her father. So I wrote a screenplay."

Photo: Anders Roth
© Stiftelsen Ingmar Bergman

The very first version of the manuscript, which appears to have been called "Sentimental Journey" has been lost, a fact confirmed by the earliest surviving version, known as "Marie" and dated 1945. This is a clear predecessor of Summer Interlude, despite the fact that – as Maaret Koskinen has observed – the title role character of this hand-written script bears no particular resemblance to the Marie of the completed film. In adapting the manuscript Bergman was helped by Herbert Grevenius, and together they turned the story into a fully functional screenplay.

Read more in Sources of inspiration