Media gallery for
Prison

Bergman was very pleased with the casting. Among the actors were actor and the directing colleauge Hasse Ekman (Martin Grandé) and his wife Eva Henning (Sofi).

Birgitta Carolina (Doris Svedlund) and Thomas (Birger Malmsten). Prison was the first film Bergman directed from his own original screenplay. He was given the opportunity on condition that production costs were kept down to 185,000 Swedish kronor.

Thomas (Birger Malmsten).

Birgitta Carolina (Doris Svedlund) hides from the police in a basement, where she meets a little boy hiding from his parents. He shows her his secret treasure, a knife. The police soon discover Birgitta Carolina’s hiding place. When she is brought to the police station, she meets Thomas (Birger Malmsten), who claims to have murdered his wife.

In the book Images, Bergman writes: ’Doris Svedlund as Birgitta Carolina was also lovely. It was important to me that she did not look like the typical Swedish movie whore. Prison, after all, is a story about soul, she is the soul. Doris shone with her own enigmatic light.’

Birger Malmsten (Thomas) and Bergman both made their film debut with Torment. Malmsten would go on to play anxiety-ridden characters in many of Bergman’s early films.

Thomas (Birger Malmsten).

Director Martin Grandé (Hasse Ekman) is visited in his studio by his old maths teacher, Paul (Anders Henriksson), who has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital. He offers Martin an ideá for a film. The central idea is that hell is here on earth. The Devil reigns.

In the attic, Thomas (Birger Malmsten) finds an old film projector he used to play with as a child. He shows a film, an old farce and trick film, a pastiche on Méliès' naively grotesque film style.

Swedish poster for Prison.

In the book Images Bergman writes: ’Eva Henning brought a totally unexpected tone of pure sorrow to the film. She has a brief scene with the director in which she says: ’Is it so that we as children collect something that called-spirit?’ Eva Henning does the scene absolutley beautifully with her austerity, her warmth and sense of humor.’

The first page of Bergman’s script draft for Prison with the working title ”The Prison”. Initially, Bergman wanted to call the film True Story, but Lorens Marmstedt said that Swedish movie audiences didn’t understand irony, and they’d just get mad.