In Sweden, Walpurgis is a festival celebrating the arrival of spring-a time for love, sex, and procreation. Walpurgis Night argues strenuously for all three. Victor Sjöström plays a newspaperman who bemoans Sweden's falling birth rate, which he ascribes to a passionless new breed who don't know what to do on Walpurgis Night. But the feelings of his daughter, played by Bergman, toward her married boss (Lars Hanson) are nothing if not passionate. Described by a contemporary Swedish critic as “one of the most brilliant erotic comedies ever made in this country,” with one back-alley abortion, one murder, and one suicide, Walpurgis Night now looks deadly serious, despite its occasional satire on sex and journalism. Bergman, though lovely, appears strangely frightened throughout the film, and perhaps with good reason; as the actress herself would find in fifties America, between the scandalmongers and the idealists there's little room for passion.