Directed by: Mac Ahlberg
Stars: Essy Persson, Preben Mahrt, Jørgen Reenberg
Language: English
Country: Denmark
Also known as: Jeg – en kvinde, I, a Woman
Description: The young nurse Siv is frustrated by the strict restraints of her religious parents and her boring fiancé, Sven. At the hospital where she works a patient Heinz, a married antiques dealer flirts with her. Although she is warned that he is a philandering playboy, she allows him to seduce her and they have an affair. He tells her that he loves her and proposes to leave his wife for her. Having only just discovered a new world of sexual liberty, she rejects his proposal. She then breaks off her engagement with Sven, moves away from her parents and finds a nursing position in another city. She meets Lars, a sailor, and they begins a relationship. When he proposes marriage, she breaks up with him. She begins dating Doctor Dam at the hospital where she works. He also falls in love with her, so she stops seeing him and decides that no single man will ever completely fulfill her own desires. She has a sexual encounter with a stranger, Eric who she realizes perfectly matches her own …
This classic Scandinavian sex film was positively scandalous when it was released in 1965, but five or ten years later it would seem almost laughably tame and it is largely forgotten today. It tells the tale of a young Swedish girl who has a rather strange relationship with her violinist father (an early scene shows her apparently masturbating while her father plays his violin in the next room). After her beloved father becomes sick and dies, she spurns her young fiancé and becomes involved in a series of casual affairs with older men, including a patient in the hospital where she works (it’s interesting that Swedish hospital patients could apparently smoke, drink, and schtup their nurse right in their hospital room back in those days) and a merchant sea captain. Each of her various suitors wants to marry her, but she always clings fiercely to her independence.
This is not a very dramatically compelling film, but it has two things going for it. The first is the gorgeous black-and-white photography. The director was Mac Alberg, an internationally renowned cinematographer who dabbled in directing (a field where he was far less talented). He was kind of like the Italian Aristide Maccessi (aka Joe D’Amato) in this respect, but whereas the the latter stayed with directing (eventually descending into hardcore porn), Alberg would ultimately return to cinematography and would eventually find some success in Hollywood. The second strength of this film is actress Essy Persson. Persson in some ways was not the typical Swedish actress–she was brunette with only normal-size breasts. But she has a real girl-next-door quality to her which was typical in the Swedish sex stars of her day (i.e. Marie Lilljedahl, Christina Lindberg), but almost impossible to find to today in the era of silicone-cyborg porno skanks. Radley Metzger, who made a sma Essy Persson, Preben Mahrt, Jørgen Reenbergll fortune distributing this film in America, was so taken with Persson that he cast her in the lead of his film “Therese and Isabel” (a better film where Persson gave a much better performance). She also appeared in the British horror film “Cry of the Banshee“.
This is not the kind of film I’d recommend to everyone. It’s a long, long way from modern hardcore porn, or even more classy softcore “Eurotica” like “Emmanuelle. But it does have some gorgeous cinematography and an appealing actress, and it holds some historical interest for people who enjoy films of that bygone era.
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