Sven Rudestedt

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

Married couple have romantic interludes in the summer, she at their summer cottage, him in the apartment in town.

The successful glass artist Stellan Sylvester ends up in the hospital after a car accident. He looks back at his life and finds it empty and meaningless. He falls in love with the nurse Marta but when he finds out that she engaged life turns out to be even more meaningless.

A vixen mother invades a chicken coop to provide food for her cubs. She continues to raid the coop until she is shot by a farmer. The cubs are attacked by the farmer and only one survives. An otter trapped in a burrow is rescued by 10-year-old Anders and his six-year-old brother, Kjell. In secret, the boys cage the animal and finally domesticate it. They obtain food for the Otter by fishing through the ice on a frozen lake. The boys manage to keep their secret from their family. On the eve of the May Day festival, Kjell reveals to family and friends the otter's presence. Anders is so distressed that he runs into the woods with the otter. The otter breaks away and returns to its life of natural freedom. The film was a prize winner at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival.

Monika from Stockholm falls in love with Harry, a young man on holiday. When she becomes pregnant they are forced into a marriage, which begins to fall apart soon after they take up residence in a cramped little flat.

Rakel, Marta, Karin and Annette are married to four brothers. While waiting in a summer cottage for their husbands to come home, they tell each other stories about their marriages. Rakel tells about the time she had an affair and confronted her husband with it. Marta's story is about how she at first refused to marry and had her child by herself. Karin tells about what happened when one time she and her husband got stuck in an elevator together. While the women tell their stories, Marta's younger sister Maj is planning to elope.

A jaded prima ballerina reminisces about her first love affair after she is unexpectedly sent her lover's old diary.

Atka Natas is a secret agent from the oppressive regime of Liquidatzia. He visits his estranged wife Vera, a chemist who is involved with a group of exiles trying to smuggle their compatriots out of Liquidatzia. Almkvist, a local policeman and former lover of Vera's, contacts her while investigating the death of one of the refugees. Natas has a list of agents operating in the host country and wants to sell them to the Americans. However before he can do so, Vera tries to kill him, after an argument about getting her parents out of Liquidatzia.

Jan-Erik Widgren meets the lonely Bertha Olsson, a woman struggling with alcoholism. Though Bertha is already linked to Caligula, Jan-Erik's heartless teacher, she begins a relationship with the boy anyway. When Caligula learns that Jan-Erik is having an affair with Bertha, he begins to torture his student psychologically. He reserves his cruelest behavior for Bertha, however, which results in a tragic turn of events.

An army musician is mistaken for a company manager and fall in love.

Day to day life for an aristocratic family is upended when they lose their fortune and their housekeeper suddenly receives a large inheritance.

Wholesaler Pettersson ends up in the military after being mixed up with a soldier on the run, who has stolen his identity.

Mr. Miller is the CEO of a big soap company whose son Henry like to spend his father's money but isn't interesting in working. Henry's laziness makes Mr. Miller upset and stressed out, so he assigns his young secretary (who the son also is in love with) to figure out a way to make Henry work and she will get 10,000 crowns ($1000). But things doesn't really to turn out the way Mr. Miller imagined.

Operetta singer Adolf Berg will be called up for military duty just as he gets assigned a major role in an operetta. On the train he meets Ulla Wern and complications occur.