Ingmar Bergman's Waiting Women is also known by its slightly racier American title, Secrets of Women. Both titles are apt. Four women are waiting at the summer home of the Lobelius family for their husbands to arrive. Each is married to one of the four Lobelius brothers, who run the family business. When Annette (Aino Taube) complains about the lack of intimacy in her marriage to Paul (Håkan Westergren), the other three respond with stories about their marriages. Rakel (Anita Björk) tells how her confession to an affair with an old flame caused her husband, Eugen (Karl-Arne Holmsten), to threaten suicide. Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) tells of her affair with the youngest of the Lobelius brothers, Martin (Birger Malmsten), who wanted to break free from the family business and become an artist in Paris. Marta discovered that she was pregnant with Martin's child, but when she went to tell him, his brothers had just arrived to tell him that their father has died and he's needed back home to run the company. She decided to have the baby on her own, but Martin returned to marry her. The oldest, Karin (Eva Dahlbeck), tells of attending a party with her husband, Fredrik (Gunnar Björnstrand), who scolded her on the way home afterward for wearing a dress that he thinks is too décolleté. We have already seen how pompous Fredrik can be in the scene in which the brothers try to persuade Martin to give up la vie bohème and join the business, but Fredrik loosens up a lot when he and Karin are trapped overnight in an elevator. It's one of Bergman's best early films, with his usual bittersweet comedy touch that he would perfect in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), though it's decidedly pre-feminist in its outlook: Contemporary viewers may wonder why marriage seems to be the only object in view for these intelligent women.
