Mellan liv och död

George af Klercker is a director that people have been discovering with a certain astonishment in recent years and this psychlogcial thriller is one of his finest films. The narrative - and it has a most unusual (for the time) anonymous third-person narrative - is absolutely gripping from the word go. The slightly creepy touchy-feely complicity of the doctor and his assistant in the firsts scene is beautifully done and immediately excites interest that transfers with a brilliant use both of an occasionally mobile camera and a masterful mise en scène from scene to scene.with a tantalising fluency.

The story is in some ways a typical triangle of love, jealousy and revenge but runs a course that disdains melodrama in favour of a certain lingering ambiguity (rather in the style of Japanese films of the thirties)..

All the performances are good but Lilly Cronwin as Inger is outstanding.

The subsequent marginalisation of af Klercker, squeezed out, if legend is to be believed, by a combination of the powerful producer Charles Magnusson and the rival directors Sjöström and Stiller, was a sad loss for Swedish and European film and the decades during which his films remained almost totally unknown are yet another among the many examples of the worldwide cinema industry's disgraceful denial of its heritage.