Anna Hofman-Uddgren was a former chanteuse and an enterprising theater director who included films in her variety shows. As production manager and director of the film company Orientaliska Teaterns Filmbyra, between 1911 and 1912 (when Stiller and Sjöström were just beginning their cinematic careers) she made six films, after which she gave up filmmaking altogether to return to private life and the rearing of her six children. In The Father she chose one of Strindberg's most disturbing visions of family life to adapt for the screen. It is the story of an army captain and his wife locked in a deadly psychological battle over the upbringing of their daughter. The "filmed theater" of this drawing room tragedy gives way to cinema, particularly in the scene in which the captain (August Falk) is seen riding through the autumn countryside. It is a moment that prefigures the more freely cinematic treatment Hofman-Uddgren gave to her adaptation of Miss Julie, her best film, now sadly lost.