Swedish director Alf Sjöberg is best known here for his Strindberg adaptation, Miss Julie, but his earlier films represent achievements in a variety of styles. Sweden's foremost stage director in the '30s, Sjöberg went on to become a film director of astonishing range and versatility; his inventiveness and his thematic concerns made significant and lasting contributions to the language of the Swedish cinema. Of Sjöberg's central themes, perhaps none is so strongly developed as that of contempt for women in modern society--evident not only in his several Strindberg adaptations, but in the 1949 Only a Mother, which today seems a remarkably contemporary analysis of a woman's life wasted by prejudice.
A willful young farm woman, Rya-Rya (played by Eva Dahlbeck) takes a break from her harvesting chores for a nude dip in the lake: a simple act that changes her life. The community seethes with the news of such boldness; her fiancé publicly rejects her at a dance that evening, and she reacts by going home with another man, Henrik. When she discovers that she is expecting Henrik's child, she enters into a joyless marriage and a life devoted to her children, haunted by her desire for a way out and plagued by a village that has never forgiven her for her pride.
Only a Mother was showcased at a recent New York Film Festival, where it was noted, “Eva Dahlbeck gives a magnificent performance.... The way she manages the transition from youthful grace to middle-aged stolidity, with her hair drawn up and back and that curiously wooden stance, is nothing short of miraculous.”