My dear friends!

We're now going to make a film together. It will look different from our earlier works, and this script will also look different. We shall strain the medium's resources in a rather complicated way. More than usual, therefore, I must tell you what it is I'm after; then we can get together and talk over how we are to give shape to our problems, cinematographically and artistically.

As I turn this project over in my mind it never stands out as a completed whole. What it most resembles is a dark flowing stream: faces, movements, voices, gestures, exclamations, light and shade, moods, dreams. Nothing fixed, nothing really tangible other than for the moment, and then only an illusory moment. A dream, a longing, or perhaps an expectation, a fear, in which that to be feared is never put into words. I could go on indefinitely describing key and colour, we shouldn't be any the wiser. We had better get started.

The scene is set in a stately home, half mansion, half manorhouse. It was built perhaps sometime in the eighteenth century to serve as a retreat for a distinguished gentleman's cast-off mistress—I don't know. In any case it is not too large and not too small. There is also an old, rather neglected park, aflame with autumnal splendor. It is all remote, still, a shade dismal at times.

The time is the turn of the century. The women's clothes are lavish, expensive, concealing and revealing. We needn't get caught up in exact dates; it is not the precise beginning of a new era, and can just as well be the 1880s or 1890s. The important thing is that the clothes, by their power of suggestion, are in accord with our demand for atmosphere. The same applies very much to the interiors; when constructing them, we must bear in mind the possibilities of creating the lighting conditions we desire: dawns which don't look like dusk, soft firelight, the mysterious indirect light on a day when it is snowing, the gentle radiance from an oil lamp. The torment of a bright, sunny autumn day. A solitary candle in the darkness of night and all the restless shadows when someone wrapped in a wide peignoir hurries through the big rooms...

At the same time it is important that our decor never be obvious. It should be flexible, enclosing, elusive, and present, evocative without being obtrusive. There is a peculiarity about it, however: all our interiors are red, of various shades. Don't ask me why it must be so, because I don't know. I have puzzled over this myself and each explanation has seemed more comical than the last. The bluntest but also the most valid is probably that the whole thing is something internal and that ever since my childhood I have pictured the inside of the soul as a moist membrane in shades of red.

Furniture, props, and other paraphernalia must be very exact, but we must be able to use them capriciously and just as they suit our purpose. But everything must be beautiful and harmonious. It must be the way it is in a dream: a thing is there because we desire it or need it, just for the moment.

There are four leading characters in the drama. Four women. I shall give a brief account of them, without any order of precedence.

AGNES is thought of as being the owner of the estate, having lived on there after the death of her parents. She has never brought herself to move away from it; she has belonged there since birth, and has let her life flow quietly and imperceptibly along, without any meaning or misfortune. She has vague artistic ambitions—dabbling in painting, playing the piano a little; it is all rather touching. No man has turned up in her life. For her, love has been a confined secret, never revealed. At the age of thirty-seven she has cancer of the womb and is preparing to make her exit from the world as quietly and submissively as she has lived in it. She spends most of the night and the day in bed—her large bed in her parents' handsome but cluttered bedroom. But she can still get up now and then, until the pain strikes her down. She complains little and does not think that God is cruel. In her prayers she turns to Christ in meek expectation. She is very emaciated, but her belly has swollen up as though she were in an advanced stage of pregnancy.

KARIN, her elder sister by two years, married money and moved to another part of the country. She soon found out that her marriage was a mistake. Her husband, who is twenty years her senior, is repulsive to her physically and mentally. She is the mother of five children, but nevertheless seems untouched by maternity and matrimonial misery. She presents an irreproachable facade and is considered stuck-up and reserved. Her loyalty to her marriage is unshakable. Deep down, under a surface of self-control, she hides an impotent hatred of her husband and a permanent rage against life. Her anguish and desperation never come to light except in her dreams, which torment her from time to time. In the midst of this tumult of bridled fury, she bears a gift for affection, devotion, and a longing for nearness. This large capital lies immovably shut in and unused.

MARIA is the youngest sister. She, too, is wealthily and securely married to a good-looking and successful man in a suitable social position. She has a daughter of five; she herself is like a spoiled child—gentle, playful, smiling, with an ever-active curiosity and love of pleasure. She is very much taken up with her own beauty and her body's potentialities for pleasure. She is completely lacking in imagination about the world in which she lives; she is sufficient unto herself and is never worried by her own or other people's morals. Her only law is to please.

ANNA is the maidservant in the house. She is about thirty. As a girl, she had a daughter, and Agnes looked after her and the child. This meant that Anna became very attached to Agnes. A silent, never-expressed friendship was established between the two lonely women. The child died at the age of three, but the relationship between Anna and Agnes endured. Anna is very taciturn, very shy, unapproachable. But she is ever-present—watching, prying, listening. Everything about Anna is weight. Her body, her face, her mouth, the expression of her eyes. But she doesn't speak; perhaps she doesn't think, either.

The basic situation when the film (or whatever we're going to call our project) begins is this: Agnes's disease has rapidly got worse and the doctor does not give her much longer to live. The two sisters (her only relatives) have come to her deathbed.