"This is a film about loneliness-no theme is more adequate for ourtimes: our total, individual helplessness." (Alf Sjöberg,1949) Of Sjöberg's central themes, perhaps none is so stronglydeveloped as that of the contempt for women in modern society. Only aMother today seems a remarkably contemporary analysis of a woman's lifewasted by prejudice. A willful young woman, Rya-Rya (Eva Dahlbeck), partof a community of (traditionally oppressed) itinerant farmworkers, takesa break from her harvesting chores for a nude dip in the lake: a simpleact that changes her life. The community seethes with the news of suchboldness; her fiancé publicly rejects her at a dance and shereacts by going home with another man, leading eventually to a joylessmarriage and a life haunted by a desire for a way out. "(This)Zola-esque chronicle°is the revelation of the series°Dahlbeck's Rya-Ryais one of the greatest performances in European cinema." (ElliottStein)