(1946, b/w; Kris, Swedish) This is an ordinary drama, says the voice of the narrator, "almost a comedy," of Ingmar Bergman's directorial debut, adapting Leck Fischer's play Modherjetet, but a tragic story as well.

Eighteen years after giving up her infant, Jenny (Marianne Löfgren) returns to the quiet village where her daughter Nelly (Inga Landgré) has been raised by Miss Ingeborg Johnson (Dagny Lind), a piano teacher who runs a boarding house, whom the girl affectionately calls Mutti. In Stockholm Jenny has done well for herself as the owner of a beauty salon; she now wants to reclaim her only child, neglected after all these years, for herself.

As the two women argue over who is Nelly's real mother, Ingeborg, saying she is ill, pleads with Jenny (whose sudden interest seems little more than a whim) to "leave things the way they are," at least until her demise. At the hotel Jenny's young boyfriend Jack (Stig Olin), her half brother's son, shows up.

Excited about attending the ball in the evening, Nelly puts on the dress "Aunt" Jenny has sent her, disappointing Mutti, who's borrowed money to buy her a party dress. After dancing a waltz with Ulf (Allan Bohlin), a veterinarian renting a room in Ingeborg's house whose marriage proposal she has turned down, Nelly makes Jack's acquaintance; taking sips of his "Jack the Ripper Evensong," she joins the younger crowd for wild dancing to jazz music, creating a commotion and scandal.

Going off with Jack to the riverside, she tells him: "You're like no one else." Jack, after saying that a dragon stands over him demanding a few pounds of flesh, passionately kisses her; Ulf finds the pair and shoves Jack into the water.

Back home with Ingeborg, Nelly says she doesn't want to ever leave; Mutti replies that she won't let her go either because "you're all I have." However, following her first meeting alone with Jenny, referring to herself now as "mother" and recommending the advantages of living in the city with its good wages and social opportunities (while much of Sweden is suffering from pain and famine), Nelly promptly agrees to depart that night with Jenny.

In Nelly's absence, Ulf takes his exit as well (though his room remains vacant in anticipation of his returning), and Ingeborg, receiving a terminal diagnosis from Dr Edvard, says: "It serves me right." Borrowing money again from Aunt Jessie (who had long ago been sweet on her deceased brother), Ingeborg takes the train to Stockholm to see Nelly briefly, perhaps for the last time; before returning, Ingeborg by chance meets Jack at the train station.

Taking time to be company until her train arrives, he answers Ingeborg's query by saying he doubts he's in love with Nelly: "I only love myself." His relationship with Jenny, he confesses, is "diabolical," each feeding on the other, neither giving only, taking, for which they ultimately must pay the price. Nevertheless, he recognizes in Nelly someone who is real, compared to his lack of reality; she could be his anchor. In saying farewell, he assures Ingeborg, who has solely given of herself to others, that she will one day have her reward.

Disheveled and haggard, the young actor, rhapsodizing of his moonlit life, goes to see Nelly at the salon, showing her the pistol in his pocket and asking her to take him to the police station for having murdered - turning on the gas to make it appear to have been an accident - the pregnant girl with whom he's been living. That's when Jenny shows up, mocking Jack's little act.

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