Both Ake Gronberg and Harriet Andersson are excellent in Ingmar Bergman‘s Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), but the Andersson vehicle, Summer with Monika (also by Bergman), is a better film. What would improve Sawdust is if the picture were less blatant and flamboyant, and offered characters less irritating and tiresome than Frost and Frans. Granted, there is cinematic poetry here, but it amounts to little next to Andersson’s sexiness.

(In Swedish with English subtitles)