Brott i sol (1947) User Reviews

Precarious murder investigation after seven years

[clanciai · 9/10 · 10 November 2021]

This is one of the best Swedish noirs if not the very best one. Everything in it is perfect, a great intelligent script with many dramatic highlights, excellent actors all young and perfect for their roles, and one of the best film scores ever heard in Swedish cinema. The composer was a Viennese composer who wrote the music for many German films and for a few Swedish ones around 1950 under the pen name of Charles Wildman. The music sets the mood from the beginning in a haunting tune of impending disaster, accentuated later on by stormy weather, a sailing accident wonderfully staged, the protagonist's alcoholic dreams and hallucinations and is sustained until the bitter end. The protagonist (Birger Malmsten), a rich young man, art collector and excellent musician (pianist) owns a villa in the archipelago, and he has some close friends for his guests around midsummer. They drink a lot, two of them are girls shamefully treated by the handsome playboy Raoul, an unbearably superior dandy (Curt Masreliez), who goes out sailing with the other friend, Richard, played by Ulf Palme, one of the best Swedish actors ever. They are surprised by a storm, they are wrecked, one of them is found alive in the water and restored, while the other one, Raoul, never is found. However, he did come back alive and is found seven years later as a corpse buried under a silver fir, which is where the film begins and the investigation starts. This barren tree that never catches on carries a lot of symbolism for the film. There is a lot of anguish and great sentiments here, Gunnel Broström is outstanding as the shamefully charming Marguerite and Jan Molander is priceless as the ridiculous fool, the clown of the play, which was written by Staffan Tjerneld. The film was partly rewritten by the director Göran Gentele, while the play was remade in 1962 following the book exactly, which is inferior to the film, which you are bound to return to and can watch again any number of times.