Critics reviews

I still prefer it to most of [Bergman's] canonical masterworks. Everyone's miserable but they're not yet so floridly articulate about it, and there's a truly fascinating mix of performance styles, from Annika Tretow's pragmatic naturalism as Alma (a role model for independent women if there ever was one) to Hasse Ekman's nakedly expressionistic leering.

This 1953 film is perhaps the most German expressionist of Bergman's 50s works, as redolent of sexual cruelty and angst as Variety and The Blue Angel, but no less impressive for all that.