Hans Nordström

The art of clowning, the art of living. Stop your weeping, keep on giving.

Before World War II, Swedish workers had to deal with low wages, scarce work, and the extensive importation of foreign labor, particularly for the purpose of breaking strikes. This did not make foreigners of any stripe very popular, and those from "guest worker" countries were particularly disliked. In this film, set in 1938, a half-Polish boy goes to Poland in search of his mother, runs into financial and psychological difficulties there, and is sent back to a Swedish mental hospital. In another story, an unfortunate woman suffers a miscarriage and ends up at the asylum where the Polish boy is being kept.

The rich young man Teddy Anker invests his money in the theater in the beginning of the 1920s. Whatever he does becomes a success. He falls in love with a dancer, Karin. He decides to put up a show with Karin as the leading lady, but for the first time one of his shows becomes an economic disaster.

Olof is driven from home when he wants to marry the wrong girl. He takes a job as a log driver and his reputation as a womanizer goes far and wide.