(1949; b/w Swedish, subtitles) Ingmar Bergman directed this tale of woe and misery.

In a hotel room in Basel, Switzerland, returning from a tour through southern Europe in 1946, Ruth (Eva Henning), a dancer recovering from a knee injury, prone to tantrums, and her intellectual husband, Bertil (Birger Malmsten), an assistant lecturer, bicker over their former lovers. Bertil shows Ruth two valuable Arethusa coins he found in Sicily, symbolic of a male and a female who can never be joined.

On the train about to depart on a two-day journey through war-ravaged Germany to their home in Stockholm, they look out their compartment to see Lt Raoul (Bengt Eklund) and his wife on their way to Italy. Raoul had had an affair one summer with Ruth, which the mother of his three children discovered. A decent man can have two women in his life, he says to his wife. Ruth became pregnant (Raoul refused to accept responsibility, calling her a whore) and had an abortion; she believes it made her sterile. "There isn't a man who hasn't brought ruin to a woman," she tells Bertil, who disagrees.

Bertil's former lover, Viola (Birgit Tengroth), a young widow, suffering from encephalitis, has been seeing Dr Rosengren, a psychiatrist, who has been trying to disabuse her of her illusion of having had a happy marriage and seduce her into a love affair, saying that to be loved would be better for her than for her to give love in return. After Viola escapes the clutches of Dr Rosengren, who forbids her to leave, she nearly ends up in the arms of Ruth's former friend in ballet classes, who very suggestively says this is a woman's way to freedom and independence. Thinking that this, too, was like being with the doctor during which something took away her will power, Viola rushes off into the midsummer's night.

At a stop the hungry hordes beg for food from passengers on the train - Ruth gives away what she Bertil have brought with them - with a ruined landscape in full view. A pair of healthy clergymen discuss how talking things over is the best way to manage a marriage. During the steamy night, Bertil appears ready to push Ruth out a door from the train as she seems about to jump out; he dreams of striking Ruth with an empty bottle: "She won't be prattling anymore." The couple commiserate with each other after another fight during which Ruth has expressed hatred and fear of divorce: being alone and independent would be worse than together in hell.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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