Alf Kjellin and Mai Zetterling proved to be such a successful pairing in Torment that Sjöberg brought them back for Iris and the Lieutenant. A frivolous young officer, Robert Molander, enrages his family and particularly his domineering father by falling in love with his aunt's housemaid, Iris. There is a gay and carefree feel to the first half of the film, as this haute bourgeois family enjoys sumptuous meals while all about them postwar Sweden is in decline. But the sudden death of Robert casts a pall upon the proceedings. Iris finds herself pregnant, vulnerable and thoroughly ostracized by the Molanders. Peter Cowie suggests that "Sjöberg detested the immobile class system represented by the Molander family in Iris, and sees in the young lovers some hope for a future that's more egalitarian in terms of both money and emotions. But there's an aching, melancholic tinge to the affair that reminds us of Bergman, and also of Lean's Brief Encounter from the previous year." Iris came at a time in Swedish history when enormous changes in social policy had supplanted the bourgeoisie. Iris revolts against the conformity insisted upon by the Molanders, drawing courage from a remark of Robert's-"If we stop believing in God, the whole of our culture will collapse like a cardboard house." Her rebelliousness is counterpointed by what Peter Cowie describes as the "embalmed melancholy" of the Molander mansion. Sjöberg defeats the ache of nostalgia, but the passing of any grand tradition carries along a well-worn sense of loss.