Mittsommernacht (1967)

The Norwegian farmer Arne Arndahl is a tough, domineering patriarch and, with his sawmill, the region’s most important employer. He lives on the remote Svytelma farm with his two grown-up daughters, Astrid and Christine, and the housekeeper, Karen. One day, he goes hunting. The boorish, crude, unattractive head farmhand Erik sees this as an opportunity. He makes a very forceful advance toward Astrid and, when she proves unwilling, tries to rape her. At the last moment, he is stopped from carrying out his brutal intention, and Astrid drives him off the farm. When the big farmer Arne returns from the hunt and hears what Erik has done, he is beside himself. He harnesses the cart and drives to the nearest town, to the inn where he believes Erik is. He intends to take the rogue to task. A fierce fight breaks out, in which Arne nearly beats Erik to death with a piece of hardwood. Tore, a stranger who has just arrived in the area, prevents the bloody deed at the last moment. Meanwhile, the big farmer has quite different worries: One night, roaming wolves pay an unwelcome visit to the livestock in the barns. They have already killed a calf. Arne therefore decides to put an end to the animals and follows their tracks, armed. When a snowstorm catches him in the wilderness along the way, the old man is trapped: the wolves have surrounded him. Arne tries to escape the gray predators, slips as he flees, and loses his rifle. He is quickly in danger of being overwhelmed as the wolves leap at him. Tore saves him and then follows him to the Svytelma farm. There, the handsome, strongly built, mysterious young man soon turns the heads of the Arndahl women one after another. Karen, who is out for her own advantage, wants to enlist him for her purposes. But Tore soon falls in love with Christine, the youngest of the Arndahl daughters, who returns his feelings. Disappointed by his rejection, Karen tries to take revenge on Tore and learns from her accomplice Aslak that Arne had been in prison on suspicion of murder. She spreads this information publicly. But in the end, Tore is able to track down and expose the real culprit.