Swedish director Jan Troell uses elegant black and white for this fact-based film about Torgny Segerstedt, a newspaper editor whose fire-breathing anti-Nazi editorials challenged Sweden’s neutrality both before and during WWII.
Segerstedt’s (Jesper Christensen) public stances are irreproachable, but at home he’s a disaster. He’s coldly neglectful of his wife, Puste (Ulla Skoog), and flaunts his mistress, Maja (Pernilla August), at dinner parties. Maja’s husband, Axel (Björn Granath), bankrolls the newspaper and is fine with his wife’s sleeping with the editor, in one of those laissez faire, Euro adulteries that puzzle Americans to no end.
This is a handsome movie, rich in period detail, but the stately pace slows to a crawl in the second half. Despite Christensen’s fine performance, whether or not a man can continue to write editorials never feels like one of the 1930s’ more pressing issues.