Marianne Loefgren Movies

Dagmar's next-door neighbor, a writer, receives both a legacy and a mystery when Dagmar commits suicide. The legacy is her few belongings. The mystery is exactly why she killed herself. He investigates her stark life, from the fact that she was an illegitimate child, to the successful blackmailing of her father for money to help her alcoholic boyfriend seek treatment. In order to understand what triggered her to act, he needs to determine the identity of someone she writes of in her diary as the one true love of her life. This black-and-white Swedish language film probably has subtitles. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Gustav Molander's Woman Without a Face (originally Kvinna utan Ansikte) is distinguished by a screenplay by no less than Ingmar Bergman. Not a remake of Molander's A Woman's Face, as one might assume at first glance, the later film concentrates on the emotional turmoil experienced by an artist named Ruth (Gunn Wallgren). Unable to reach out to her friends and loved ones, Ruth puts her fate in the hands of the duplicitous Victor (George Funkqvist), who is Satan in everything but name. One wonders how this quintessentially Bergmanesque material would have been handled with Bergman himself in the director's chair. In America, Woman Without a Face was sold on the reputation of his male lead, up-and-coming matinee idol Alf Kjellin. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ingmar Bergman made his directorial debut with this 1946 drama which found a number of his key themes already in place. Ingeborg (Dagny Lind) is a middle-aged woman living in a small Swedish community where she supports herself giving piano lessons and running a boarding house. Ingeborg has devoted much of her life to looking after Nelly (Inga Landgre), a teenage girl who was abandoned by her mother Jenny (Marianne Lofgren) when she was a baby. Ingeborg deeply loves Nelly and think of her as her daughter, and she's distraught when Jenny appears and announces she intends to reclaim Nelly and take her to Stockholm, where she now runs a successful beauty salon. Despite Ingeborg's pleas that her poor health limits the time she can spend with Nelly, Jenny is adamant, and the teenager decides to go, though her decision is largely motivated by her mixed feelings about Ulf (Allan Bohlin), an older veterinarian who wants to marry her, and her sudden infatuation with Jack (Stig Olin), a mysterious charmer who is a friend and distant relative of Jenny. Kris (aka Crisis) was adapted from a popular stage play by Leck Fisher; the production was hampered by Bergman's inexperience, and his mentor Victor Sjostrom was brought in to supervise the last few weeks of shooting. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Swedish June Night didn't get much American play until after its star, Ingrid Bergman, was firmly entrenched in Hollywood. Ingrid plays a small-town girl who becomes romantically involved with fast-and-loose sailor Gunnar Sjoberg. Injured in a shooting accident, the girl can't tell the police-or reveal the extent of her wounds-without revealing her "shameful" relationship with Sjoberg. This soap-operish endeavor was Bergman's final Swedish effort before her move to America. June Night was also distributed as A Night in June, just as if there were actually a difference. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi