Ingmar Bergman's script is his most novelistic yet. The film is set in an unidentified Swedish town, with a bishop, a university and a theater. Through the eyes of two of the children of the town's aristocrats we follow the family over the course of the year 1912, and watch a story unfold that is unexpectedly suspenseful, cruel, and shocking. One of Bergman's richest explorations of love and death.