Documentary short film about the work of Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), one of the most famous Danish sculptors, who spent a good part of his life in Italy.

An agrarian community sometime in the 1700s. The farmer Påvel is married with his young wife Märit and very proud to have married such a young and sweet girl. Märit however, is disappointed about her marriage. Their neighbor Håkan lives alone on his farm and he falls in love with Märit. He tells her of his feelings and Märit is torn between the security of her marriage and the feelings she has for Håkan.

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.

Arne Sucksdorff’s short documentary observes gulls raiding nests and stealing eggs with ruthless persistence. Though presented as pure nature study, the film was widely read as an allegory of Nazism—a symbolic parable of predation and violence during wartime. Sucksdorff himself denied such intent, but remarked that “a film that is not open to interpretation is a dead film.”