Iris and the Lieutenant (1946)

Director: Alf Sjöberg
Writers: Olle Hedberg, Alf Sjöberg.
Stars: Mai Zetterling, Alf Kjellin, Åke Claesson.    
Runtime: 86 minutes    

Plot: The officer Robert Motander is invited to a dinner with his upper-class relatives. During the dinner he observes the beautiful young house-maid, Iris. He suggests that the two of them go out to see a movie. This is the beginning of a love story that Robert's relatives will do anything to stop. A working-class mistress will do but a working-class fiancée? Never!

Review: Alf Sjöberg's film version of Olle Hedberg's bittersweet novel of the young lieutenant and the little maid is a tender portrayal with the signature Alf energy behind every scene. He whips out a corrosive, uneasy mood in the brilliant beginning and never lets go throughout the production and he excels in revealing details and bold camera settings, where stairs, mirrors and other props are used with technical mastery. But he also remains tender and gentle, warmer than any time in the scenes with Iris and the Lieutenant. Perhaps because the Mai Zetterling and Alf Kjellin is an extraordinarily lovable pair, her being piteously young, slightly melancholy, weak, yet full-blooded, a budding femme fatale; and he was serious yet dashing, well-mannered and a youthful male.

It is a film with dramatic, demonized and poetic strength, firm and tight in the image portrayal. Each image is as always in Sjöberg's movies: purposefully composed. All the actors give their best, such as Ingrid Borthen as the hysterically wicked Mary and all these together make it the classic that it is, truly deserving of the awards it has amassed over the years.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam