1950s Swedish Movies

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.

A traveling magician and his troupe arrive in a Swedish town in the 1840s, where their act is scrutinized by local authorities and a skeptical medical official. Their stay leads to a series of confrontations that test the boundaries between performance, belief, and deception.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

Early in the 20th century, middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman and his young wife, Anne, have still not consummated their marriage, while Fredrik's son finds himself increasingly attracted to his new stepmother. To make matters worse, Fredrik's old flame Desiree makes a public bet that she can seduce him at a romantic weekend retreat where four couples convene, swapping partners and pairing off in unexpected ways.

The Danish school teacher Mogens Jensen is on his holiday through Sweden in a rickety T-Ford.

Britta is the foster daughter of Professor Rydberg. The last 13 years she has lived with him and his son Sven. She and Sven are closely not only at the siblings' way. They are engaged.

The four wives of four brothers share stories of their marriages as they wait for their husbands in a small, secluded cottage.

A well-composed psychological dance drama of a completely different kind from the usual romantic and sometimes superficial ballets. And an intrusive interpretation of August Strindberg's play.

The banker Marcus falls in love with the young ballet-dancer Maj who works at the opera. To meet her he takes a job there but Maj is in love with Osvald Berg, the big star of the opera. To wake Osvald's interest for her she asks Marcus if he could play deeply in love with her. Plot summary by nL.

Married couple have romantic interludes in the summer, she at their summer cottage, him in the apartment in town.

A train stops at a station in a small town. An accident has occurred and some freight cars have overturned, which stops the railway traffic. At the same time, some young people are breaking into a weapons depot, something that will have fatal consequences.

One summer day, two teens begin a reckless affair and abandon their families to be with one another.

Karl Oskar Bohm looks back at his life, his estranged daughter Augusta and his wife Sofia.

Structured as six interconnected episodes, Rabies depicts cruelty as a contagious force: each character, wounded or humiliated, passes that violence on to another. Filmed for Swedish television, Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of Olle Hedberg’s morality play presents human behavior as a relentless chain of transferred suffering.

Gertrud is being abandoned by her husband after 20 years of marriage. Offended and unhappy she leaves her home and rents a room. The landlady's son is drawn to her and tries to help her out of the loneliness.

Fransiska is visited by a social worker when she's in the custody. She tells him her lives story, about her mother who was an alcoholic, her father a night watchman and how she and her five year old little sister was left. Her boyfriend was unemployed and needed money and to help him she stole money.

A common shoe-shiner inherits a castle. Something his mean relatives dislikes. They try to scare him away with the help of fictional ghosts and other pranks.

A new realism depiction of life and work in an old restaurant. A social portrayal of exhausted staff and dubious guests.

It's summertime. The students Allan and Erik returns to their home town. 19-year old Allan is in love with 17-year old Anna-Lena. She rejects his clumsy attempts of telling her, but that's because she is uncertain of her own feelings. The Norwegian singer Lydia Hennert has an accident with her car and she is slightly injured. Allan's father is a doctor and Lydia spends a few days with them. Allan falls in love with her instead, she is a "real" woman and not a girl. But this makes Anna-Lena jealous.

A young woman faces an arranged marriage imposed by her aunts as the hour of her suitor’s arrival approaches. Adapted for television from Hjalmar Bergman’s one-act play, the film uses intimate staging and close observation to explore coercion and quiet despair.

Åsa-Nisse has a bad back and when he visits the doctor he gets an experimental medicine for horses by mistake. Suddenly Åsa-Nisse has super strengths and becomes an unbeatable athlete.

Naima Wifstrand, leading old lady, dressed as a Primadonna presents the variety revue "The Old, Happy 40's", a dark time of angst, depression and derailed, wild happiness. Those were the days. Music, dance, songs and hillarious sketches follow.

The story about the thief who didn't get crucified because Jesus was choosen to take his place.

"In rain and shine" - Sid och Filibert are identical twins. Sid is a theater manager and composer and when his brother arrives to Stockholm for a position at the Museum of Natural History, Filibert is mistaken for Sid.

A devoted but controversial priest comes to a Swedish village. He encounters conflicts with the locals. The priest has some problems within his family as well. One is related to an orphan girl.

A professor's convictions about modern sexual education and free love are challenged when his daughter decides she wants an abortion.

A triangle drama - directly from hell. The door to hell closes. A hell that the purgatory or physical torture. An inferno where the guests themselves must serve as each other's executioner.

A Swedish TV play about a workhouse in Småland, Sweden. Midsummer's Dream in the Workhouse is written by Pär Lagerkvist.

A man escapes from a psychiatric clinic, the tracks lead to the town Marstrand, where a woman is found murdered.

The Swedish/American actor Jack Harris visits the old country for the first time in his life. One of the journalist, Ingrid Billberg, is particularly interested in getting an interview with him. She finds out secret information about his next movie, and to stop her from revealing it, Jack Harris gets her alone with him on an isolated island in the archipelago. Romance blossoms... Plot by Mattias Thuresson.

Gus and Holger, two students in Uppsala, have problems with the rent. They are waiting for money from their uncle, but instead of money they are reached by the news that he has gone bankrupt.

A short documentary capturing behind-the-scenes footage from the production of Wild Strawberries, offering a glimpse of Ingmar Bergman at work with his cast and crew during the making of one of his most celebrated films.

The widow Anna Eva Flod at Hemsö needs help on the farm and hire the new boy Carlsson, who quickly wins the heart of Anna Eva.

American businessman Chris Johnson spent WW2 in Sweden and fell in love with a nurse, Karin Engström. He lost contact with her after war and now, seven years later, he returns to Sweden on a business trip, trying to find her again.

The year is 1954. The war in Korea has just ended and the superpowers stand by each side of the boarder. The peace in Europe is fragile and the cold war is imminent. At F8 - Air Fore Base, the yellow squadron stand ready with its J29 fighters.

The factory manager Rudolf Carlman lets Biffen and Bananen take care of his stable for race horses.

In this preliminary study for Study IV “Liberation” a man hauls his alter ego through various spaces. The scene is reminiscent of Luis Buñuel’s “An Andalusian Dog”, where the man drags along a piano, two priests, and two dead donkeys. Weiss was not happy with this first, more personal version. He gave up the attempt to re-edit it.

Rasmus escapes from the orphanage to find parents for himself. He teams up with a hobo and together they experience a series of adventures while looking for a home for Rasmus .

The rootless, misfit artist Bengt Hallberg escapes from a mental hospital. The head doctor believes him to be a hopeless case and dangerous for the environment. Bengt looks up Inga Larsson, the only person that matters to him.

"Rolling Sea" - After a longer stay at the hospital, the young Martin comes to Gothenburg and notice that his fiancee Sonja has met another man.