Smiles of a Summer Night (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Infidelity was one of the many bleak themes that Swedish director Ingmar Bergman dwelled on within his films and his early film Smiles of a Summer Night is one that greatly emphasizes that. Smiles of a Summer Night, Bergman's witty sex comedy, came at a time in which Bergman's marriage, and love affair was deteriorating, and he was extremely miserable. Ingmar Bergman came up with only one option: write a comedy. He even said to a group of students at the Southern Methodist University, "This was a terrible time in my life, and I was extremely depressed. So I said, 'Why not make a film just for fun?' I went away to Switzerland and had two alternatives: Write Smiles of a Summer Night or kill myself." So during an extremely deep depression Bergman developed a dark, sexy, witty comedy that involved such snappy and fast-paced dialogue, that could be greatly compared to the American screwball classics of the 1930's. 

Smiles of a Summer Night is set in Sweden during the late 19th century, where an actress decides to invite to her mother's country house party two married men, who have both been recent lovers of hers; and invite both of their wives. Bergman thought when first writing the story, "It was a challenge to write a comedy with a mathematical relationship: man-woman, man-woman...four pairs. Scramble them and then solve the equation." And soon enough this mathematical game of love begins, as the film will bring upon such things as manipulation, deception, flirtation, humiliation, lustful temptations, Russian Roulette and a trick bed that comes out through a secret trap door within a wall with a cherub on top of a bed that trumpets a tune.