JUNE NIGHT. Svensk Filmindustri, Sweden, 1940. Original title: Juninatten. Ingrid Bergman, Marianne Löfgren, Lill-Tollie Zellman, Marianne Aminoff, Olof Widgren, Gunnar Sjöberg. Director: Per Lindberg.

   In director Per Lindberg’s June Night, Ingrid Bergman delivers a stellar performance as a rebellious small town Swedish girl trying to break free from her society’s puritanical mores as well as its prurient curiosity into other people’s private lives. Although the movie begins as a crime drama, it soon reveals itself to be more of a drama and trenchant societal critique in the manner of Warner Brothers pre-code films from the early 1930s. Issues of class, social conformity in Swedish society, women working in male dominated professions, and rapidly shifting changes in romantic expectations all take center stage.

   Bergman portrays Kerstin Norbäc, a small town girl of upper middle class origins who has engaged in an illicit affair with a working class sailor. Eventually tired of him and fully cognizant that they have no future together, she laughs at him. In a fury, he shoots her, wounding her severely and forcing her into emergency surgery. But things get even worse, for when she is forced to testify against her assailant, the national press begins a salacious campaign against her. And the local townsfolk aren’t particularly sympathetic to her plight either.

   Stockholm, the big city, offers an escape for her to begin a new life and to take on a wholly new identity. Changing her name to Sara NordanÃ¥, however, doesn’t end all of her problems. She’s faced with new challenges, including those facing young women living on their own and working professional jobs in a big city. As would be expected, her former assailant eventually gets out of jail and comes to Stockholm to confront her and to win her back. And the Swedish press in the form of an intrepid dissolute reporter, an object of scorn in the film, continues to hound her despite her desire to be left alone.

   Although skillfully directed, June Night is nevertheless somewhat stilted in its presentation and plot. There’s a lack of urgency in the film, a lack of passion. The movie very much wants to say something about the role of women in Swedish society, but at the expense of fully fleshing out Bergman’s character. She’s mysterious and individualistic, but we know this more on an intellectual level than on an emotional one.