The Cinematheque

The influence of American film noir and French poetic realism is apparent in Bergman’s moody, symbol-laden second feature, an early example of a favourite Bergman subject: the couple under siege. Two unhappy outsiders meet by chance at Stockholm’s train station and fall in love. Maggi (Barbro Kollberg) is a woman with a past, now pregnant; David (Birger Malmsten) is an ex-con with barely a krona to his name. Holing up in an abandoned cottage, the couple takes a stab at happiness, but a hostile, hypocritical society continues to treat them as outcasts. A playful twist has events related by an omniscient Man with an Umbrella—a guardian angel?—who later figures prominently in the proceedings. The film marked Bergman regular Gunnar Björnstrand’s first role for the director (although Björnstrand had earlier appeared in Alf Sjöberg’s Torment, Bergman’s screenwriting debut).