Swedenhielms

Assuming that their father, professor Rolf Swedenhielm will win the Nobel prize for chemistry, his children spend money extravagantly. Rolf junior, an engineer, pilot Bo, and actor Julia live well above their means, often on credit. When it starts to look like their father’s chances of winning in Stockholm are dwindling, Bo is particularly alarmed. He is engaged to the well-off Astrid, and marrying for money would wound his male honour. Then IOUs come to light that threaten to besmirch the honour of the entire family … Critics deemed this elegant comedy of a crisis "Swedish through and through". What Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet called a "genuinely Swedish atmosphere of living in grand oblivion in the face of this world’s harsh realities" found favour in Germany as well. One review said, "the real, the human is always in the foreground, the humour has a more profound meaning". And "in Ingrid Bergman we meet a very lovely actress, who understands how to speak the difficult sentences in Swedish very pleasantly" (Film-Kurier trade journal, 1935).