In the Presence of a Clown

In 1925, Carl Åkerblom (Börje Ahlstedt), an inventor devoted to Schubert, is locked in a psychiatric ward in Uppsala after trying to kill his fiancée. Inside, he teams up with a fellow patient, Osvald Vogler (Erland Josephson), to build a "living talkie," a film performed with dialogue spoken live. Ingmar Bergman makes the project's ambition clear, and Carl has only this one piece of work to keep his mind from the death he cannot stop thinking about.