Girl with Hyacinths

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Flicka och hyacinter (Girl with Hyacinths)
Directed by	Hasse Ekman
Produced by	Lorens Marmstedt, Terrafilm
Written by	Hasse Ekman
Starring	Eva Henning Anders Ek Ulf Palme Birgit Tengroth Gösta Cederlund Marianne Löfgren
Music by	Erland von Koch (orig. score)
Release date(s)	March 6, 1950 (Swe)
Running time	86 min
Language	Swedish
IMDb profile

Girl with Hyacinths (orig. title Flicka och hyacinter) is a Swedish 1950 film directed by Hasse Ekman.

[edit] Plot

The film's story begins with a young woman (Eva Henning) attending a party. It's noisy, a lot of alcohol, people are making out in corners and this young woman is playing the piano. When asked to play a special tune, she starts but then stops abruptly and suddenly rushes out of the party, visibly upset. She runs out of the house and starts walking home alone from it late at night in central Stockholm. Crossing a bridge, she has a conversation with a drunk artist, and after his persuasion - out of kindness - buys one of his sketches that he offers her. She walks on home to her flat, goes inside and the audience see her strap a rope in the ceiling - and then witnesses how she hangs herself. The next morning her body is found by a housekeeper.

The police arrives and starts asking questions to her neighbours and people living in the house. We soon learn that the woung woman's name was Dagmar Brink, and that she was much of a loner. Nobody knew much about her, but she had lived for a while in the house, but everyone states she seemed like a sweet and nice girl when they occasionally met her. Her closest neighbours in the flat next door, writer Anders Wikner (Ulf Palme) with his wife Britt (Birgit Tengroth), are both chocked over the young and beautiful girl's suicide. Why did she do it? Soon Anders starts to investigate what happened, seeking to find out what made the young girl commit suicide, by contacting the few people who knew her and ask some questions. He meets up with the artist Elias Körner who painted a portrait of her, an old bank manager who had a cold meeting with her, a woman who shared a room with her once, an ex-husband and the singer whos party she attended that night just before she committed suicide. His wife Britt also has a story to tell about Dagmar and what happened one night in Dagmar's apartment, something she watched happening through her window.

The audience get to follow Wikner throughout the film as he meets up with people who knew Dagmar, closely or briefly. The different people's meetings with Dagmar are told in several flashbacks, and soon we learn more and more about her as her background unfolds. But it's first in film's very final scene that it is all made clear to the audience why she hung herself that night...

Films directed by Hasse Ekman
Seventh Heaven • The Firebird • Girl with Hyacinths • The Girl from the Third Row • Banketten • Each to His Own Way • One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer • While the Door Was Locked • Meeting in the Night • Fram för lilla Märta • Wandering with the Moon • Kungliga patrasket • Lågor i dunklet • Första divisionen • Med dej i mina armar