Dreams
1955 Romance / Comedy / Drama
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Summary
Susanne Frank is a fashion photographer with a successful agency in Stockholm. Doris
is her favourite model, a sensitive and naïve young woman. Having ended her
relationship with her boyfriend, Palle, Doris agrees to accompany Susanne on a trip to
the town of Gothenburg, ostensibly for a photo shoot. Susanne’s ulterior motive
for the trip is to try to rekindle an affair with her former lover, Henrik, who is now
settled with a wife and family. Whilst drifting around Gothenburg, Doris encounters a
kindly middle-aged man, Consul Otto Sönderby, who offers her expensive gifts and
persuades her to spend the afternoon with him. Later, Susanne is reunited with her
lover, but the liaison proves to be brief….
Review
Dreams, a comparatively minor work in the filmography
of Ingmar Bergman - possibly the greatest film maker in history – is one of a series of
light romantic dramas the Swedish director made in his early period, the late 1940s /
early 1950s. The film features Harriet Andersson, Bergman’s former lover and the
star of his earlier film, Monika (1953).
Less stylised and challenging than the director’s subsequent films, Dreams
resembles a conventional mix of melodrama and romantic comedy of this era.
It is certainly a very different kind of film – much lighter in tone, much less cynical,
far less philosophical – than Bergman’s subsequent films. What makes the film instantly
identifiable as Bergman is the alluring chiaroscuro cinematography (particularly his skilful
use of the close-up) which makes dialogue superfluous and conveys, far more profoundly
than words, the feelings and motivating impulses of his protagonists. It’s a sign
of Bergman’s humanity and extraordinary artistic talent that such an anodyne tale of transient
love is told with such sensitivity, elegance and soulful poetry, a suggestion of the cinematic
treasures that were later to pour from this fountain of creative genius.
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