Social mores move with the times...

Port of Call (Hamnstad, Swedish; 1948)

Director: Ingrid Bergman

The reason I thought that this movie is of value is that it depicts how much our society has changed in just about seventy years. Even though Sweden was regarded as a liberal country then, we realise that they still held many conservative values which by today's standards would be considered archaic.

Probably, for the first time, taboo topics like suicides, promiscuity and abortions are openly discussed. This must be something new for the post-World War 2 modern world.

Berit is seen jumping off a wharf, to be rescued by a sailor, Gösta, who had decided to call his sailing days quits. They develop a relationship. Slowly, we are told of Bertha's past. She is a disturbed young lady who had a troubled childhood. Growing with a strict mother and frequently quarrelling parents, she yearned to find freedom. One day, a teenage Berit is locked outside her apartment when she returns late from an outing. She runs away from home, lives in with a man and is rescued by social service. That starts the cascade of reform school, associated as a 'bad' girl, exposure to other girls with bohemian ideas about life and a few bad relationships that she later regrets. Her past reputation haunts her work as a machine operator in a factory. Colleagues are not precisely polite with their conversations and conduct.

Soon, she opens her heart to Gösta about her checkered past. With such a tainted history, the question is whether he is able to accept her as she is?

Only then do we, citizens of the 21st century, realise how the world has changed. From a time when chastity and virginity were held in such esteem, the society now views maidenhood something like a trade transaction in a garage sale, with its errors and omissions.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/riflerangeboy/