Berit is a factory girl fresh out of reformatory school and fresh from an attempted suicide by drowning when she meets a sailor named Gösta at a dance club. He beds her down that night, and later, when the two become lovers, allows himself to assume that he was the first man to do so. Meanwhile, Berit is desperate to be free: free from the badgering and manipulation of the mother she is forced to live with, free of the dirty work of the factory and free of her social worker and the constant threat of returning to reformatory school. Her already unhappy life is complicated when an old friend from the school desperately needs her help.
Personal freedom is a major theme of this lovely, bleak, but not pessimistic, early Ingmar Bergman movie. We yearn for Berit to find freedom from her unpleasant life, and most of all freedom from loneliness, just as we hope Gösta can free himself from jealousy and the specters of long-gone rivals for his affections.
Personal freedom is a major theme of this lovely, bleak, but not pessimistic, early Ingmar Bergman movie. We yearn for Berit to find freedom from her unpleasant life, and most of all freedom from loneliness, just as we hope Gösta can free himself from jealousy and the specters of long-gone rivals for his affections.