Fadern (The Father)

The film deals with a marriage in which the couple’s only daughter becomes a weapon in their battle. The husband is an officer and a scientist and represents the masculine superman, an expression of a patriarchal and strictly discipline society. In this environment, the weakness of the woman is compensated by her greater inventiveness and her ultimate power, not as a woman but as a mother. By insinuating that her husband is not the father of her child, the wife drives her husband mad step by step. The film is based on the drama by Strindberg, a play that has the stringent structure of a Greek tragedy. Sjöberg has shattered the dramatic framework of the play in a grand finale which broadens the period setting of the play to modern universality.