Screen and Stage Experiences in ‘Nine’ and ‘Little Night Music’

NYTimes.com: "IN Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film “Smiles of a Summer Night,” a romantic crisis is sparked by a trip to the theater and, in particular, a moment of eye contact that takes place there. Fredrik Egerman, a middle-aged lawyer, and his much younger wife, Anne, are attending a performance of a sophisticated comedy about French aristocrats starring the well-known actress Desirée Armfeldt. Early in the play, as Desirée delivers a witty, somewhat risqué speech about relations between men and women, she looks up at Fredrik, who was her lover some years before. The glance that passes between them is noticed by Anne, who intuits something not only about her husband’s past but also, more disturbingly if less concretely, about the present state of his desire."