Youth, Leisure, and Modernity in the Film One Summer of Happiness (1951): Exploring the Space of Rural Film Exhibition in Swedish Post-war Cinema

The 1950s was a decade of major social transformation in Sweden when the welfare state was being realized, and it has been suggested (Gunnemark, 2006) that the youth of this age became proponents of modernity, caught between the old and the new structures of society. With the film Hon dansade en sommar (One Summer of Happiness, 1951) as a reference, this chapter discusses how youth became more defined as category and identity in Sweden in the post-war period through its relation to leisure culture, not least cinema. Cinema had evolved in rural areas as part of a modern associational culture with progressive roots in the temperance movement and oppositional roots in the worker’s movement. In the post-war period, the government supported this culture and contributed to its expansion. It became a space in which youth throughout the country could come together, or individually, and submit themselves to, as well as reflect upon, images and narratives of the rapid and intense ongoing changes.