Alf Sjöberg revived the visual tradition of the Swedish silents with this mixture of fantasy and parable. Like Sjöström's Phantom Carriage, the film traverses the hard-edges of realism, only to abandon them, rising again in a plain of fantastic depiction. Playwright Rune Lindström plays the lead in the film version, bringing a radiant naiveté to Mats Ersson, the young peasant whose sweetheart is condemned and burned as a witch. Mats strides off along the 'road to heaven' in an effort to prove her innocence. Along the way, he falls in with prophets and kings, and, in a beautifully imaginative episode, spends Christmas with Joseph and Mary. Peter Cowie writes, "This pilgrim's progress, though, is blighted by the onset of avarice and rapacity; Mats, like Faust, succumbs to the Devil's blandishments and only manages to recant in the nick of time. The Road to Heaven brings to life the rustic paintings of 19th Century Dalarna, and Sjöberg's exhilarating pace sustains the parable. The pastoral locations and period costumes reinforce the film's credibility, and must have influenced Bergman when he approached The Seventh Seal. Wise and poignant, The Road to Heaven may well be the greatest Swedish film of the 1940s."