Extremely pinching vision of a war situation where the couple from Vargtimmen (ok, they have different names and initial situations, but the actors are the same) gets caught in the crossfire of two fronts. The depiction of the fighting parties as faceless, superordinate authorities are often captured in sublime surreal pictures and draws interesting parallels to Orwell's 1984, even if Bergman thwarts this context on a personal level of a slowly burgeoning conjugal war. That is why countless fundamental and philosophical questions towards Eva's and Jan's marriage are relevant and essential, while the threat and danger from the outside tears open an abyss in the inside which was toilsomely covered with lambencies before. An intense allegory on the fragile facades of civic conventions.