A traveling troupe, led by Dr. Vogler, a hypnotist and magician, travel through the night to 19th Century Stockholm. Vogler is accompanied by a witch of a grandmother, who makes love potions, and his wife, who is dressed as a male assistant. In the city they are examined and humiliated by a committee headed by a cynical medical officer.

The troupe puts on a special private performance for the medical officer and his committee. In order to stop them from amusing themselves at his expense, Vogler hypnotizes the chief constable's wife, and she tells of her amorous liaisons. Vogler then hypnotizes a servant, who when released from his trance, rushes at Vogler and kills him. The performance breaks up, and Vogler's assistants place his body in a coffin which is one of the props of the show, and carry him off.

The medical officer carries out an autopsy on his body. Then Vogler comes back from the dead and physically pursues the doctor through the house. Vogler has perpetrated an illusion on the unbelieving doctor, but is trapped by his own trick. He is rescued by messengers from the King who arrive to summon him to give a command performance at the palace.

"Widely underrated, probably because of its strong comic elements and a tour-de-force scene derived from horror movie conventions, Bergman's chilling exploration of charlatanism is in fact one of his most genuinely enjoyable films. Von Sydow is the 19th century magician/mesmerist Vogler, on the run with his troupe from debts and charges of blasphemy, whose diabolical talents are put to the test by the cynical rationalist Dr. Vergérus (Björnstrand); their clash results in humiliation, doubt, and death. Much of the film is devoted to wittily ironic sideswipes at bourgeois hypocrisy; more forceful, however, is the way Bergman transforms Vogler's ultimately futile act of revenge into a sequence of nightmarish suspense."

Olivier Assayas: "Bergmanesque Itinerary" (1990)

Jean Béranger: "Meeting with Ingmar Bergman" (1958)

Ronald Bergan: "Film Notes" (c.2001)