Gläd dig i din ungdom : Knut Toring. Ungdomstiden (1939)

Media (160)

Original title	Gläd dig i din ungdom : Knut Toring. Ungdomstiden
Film type	Feature
Category	Fiction
Director	Per Lindberg
Screenplay	Vilhelm Moberg Per Lindberg Stina Bergman Show all
Original work	Sänkt sedebetyg (Novel)
Production country	Sweden
Production company	AB Svensk Filmindustri
Awards	Festival Award Show awards
Classification	Allowed from age 15
Dialogue	Swedish
Swedish release	1939-08-14

Cast

Birgit Tengroth
Ebba Brun

Peter Höglund
Knut Toring

Carl Ström
Johan Toring, Knuts far/prästen som förkunnar lysning mellan Ebba och Helgo

Hilda Borgström
Hilda Toring, Knuts mor

Erik "Bullen" Berglund
Samuel Brun, Ebbas far, bonde

Anders Henrikson
Alrik, bonde

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Plot summary

Knut Toring is in his room in Stockholm and is sleeping. He sleeps restlessly and you see what's bothering him in inserted scenes: the big city throng - in the present - and memories of his...

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Knut Toring is in his room in Stockholm and is sleeping. He sleeps restlessly and you see what's bothering him in inserted scenes: the big city throng - in the present - and memories of his youth in the country. His wife wakes him, his children eat in the kitchen. He turns up at his work, where he is chief editor of the magazine Fristunden (The Leisure Hour) at a big publishing house. Knut reads the submitted scripts: insipid love stories. The director comes in and complains of declining circulation and wants to popularize, while Knut wants to raise standards. "I do not want to pass on phoney material to the people," he says. The Director offers him a rise in pay (censors cut a scene where a man offers a prostitute 50 crowns). Knut Toring is reluctant: He has visions of himself as a young man, "I have betrayed and denied him," he says of his younger self.

Returning home, he takes Veronal and it all fades over to Knut's youth with his father, farmer Johan Toring and his wife Hilda and their children. Knut is not diligent in agriculture, he wants to leave the farm and not be "a slave to the earth". He reads extensively all the books he gets a hold of, while his parents stick to the Bible and the Catechism. The parents worried much about their son's extensive reading and have heard stories about people who have become strange from reading too much.

Knut plays with neighbor girl Ebba Brun, the game slips over on an erotic plane where the girl takes the initiative. She lures him into a barn to look for eggs. Knut handles the situation awkwardly and the girl gets impatient and leaves him. Later he finds a book with an account of puberty and reads it to a friend. Ebba and Knut end up in a hayloft after a dance, the girl loosens her skirt, but Knut is still not enterprising enough.

In his room Knut now have books from an education library which he reads from in the night. The father sees his lighted candle and say to him to extinguish it. He turns the lights back on when the father has gone. Knut becomes more liberal and criticizes his brother's catechism reading to the consternation of the rest of the family.

Ebba Brun asks him to come to the neighbouring farm and harvest a larger field of oats that her father can not cope with because he is ill. Knut comes and cuts the oats while Ebba binds sheaves. He works so energetically that the entire field is completed in a day. After this tour de force, he takes the willing Ebba and they make love for the first time. At his home waiting impatiently for his daughter is the farmer Samuel Brun, but he calms down when young people come and announce that the entire field is completed.

Knut continues to work on his father's farm while att odds with his family. The nights are often spent in bed with Ebba Brun, while her father is lying sick in another part of the house. Ebba wants to stay in the village and Knut want to travel to the big city. Knut believes that a farm can tie people down in an unfortunate way. Ebba marries therefore Helgo instead. Knut and Ebba spend one last night together before the wedding. Knut's parents are disappointed in the son who leaves his family and countryside.

Back to Knut Toring's bedroom and his wife Aina. He tells his wife that he intends to leave the magazine. "I have to keep my spirit alive." They visit the nursery and caress their children.

The information given here refers to film material in the Swedish Film Institute’s archive. Access to the archive’s stock is given on request, for research, other film archives and rights’ holders. For enquiries please contact filmarkivet@filminstitutet.se