A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
A man on the verge of marriage is haunted by traumatic memories from his childhood.
Magda Nilsson is a very talented young woman, but she has had a difficult upbringing and lost her self-confidence. She is also a singe-parent mother with her fragile son Arne. Magda is also difficult, antisocial and hard to get to know, but beneath the surface she seeps from suppressed love needs.
"A dream play" - This made-for-television film constituted Bergman’s first production of Strindberg’s A Dream Play – a play he would revisit three times more. Gunnar Ollén’s Malmö crew was behind this, for its time, prestigious and costly theatre production, involving more than 40 actors and no less than 75 extras.
A melancholic depiction of life in a small Swedish town, seen through the eyes of a six-year-old boy.
