The year is 1946. Dr. Bertil Burman works at a Red Cross Hospital in Vienna. One day, a barely teenage girl, Leni Rosner, collapses at his reception.

Fabian Bom, auctionist in a small town, one day finds a baby boy in a small crib that is for sale at an auction. He places the boy at an orphanage but returns the next day since he realizes that he misses the boy. Since a single man is not permitted to adopt a baby he arranges a marriage with a young woman, who really is the baby's mother.

A suicidal factory girl, just out of reformatory school and anxious to escape her overbearing mother, falls in love with a sailor who can't forgive her past.

The station-master Fabian Bom is a very meticulous person, and he makes sure that the trains leaves exactly - on the second. To him, nothing could be more important than duty, efficiency and punctuality, in fact, his sense of duty is clearly perverted. His beloved Plum-Plum, the major's daughter, is infatuated with army officers. To regain her attention, he joins the infantry. Bom becomes a soldier who loves the military training, long marches as well as hard labour as punishment. He meets Agnes, who falls madly in love with him.

The difficult priest Kruse is against the business community's town mid-summer party planned by Garman. Based on the novel by Alexander Kielland.

A young prostitute, Gullan Svan, is murdered one night. The police suspects that the murderer is a student, since she had a lot of students as customers. The murderer stole a picture of Gullan after he killed her, a picture which later is found in a rented tuxedo when the tuxedo is returned. Four students decide to solve the case, but it seems that the truth is even closer than they first suspected...

Ambros Fornes owns two large farms and stunning four horses. These horses comes to fill his life because his young beautiful wife, Lisle, does not manage to love him as he loves her.

A fractured portrait of desire and isolation, following a failing marriage and parallel stories of emotional entrapment as memories surface during a train journey through postwar Europe. Told through flashbacks and multiple narrative threads, the film signals Ingmar Bergman’s emerging mature style.