

A small-town piano teacher is shocked by the arrival of her foster daughter's biological mother, whose young lover soon follows and causes further disruption.
Direction
Bergman's first film—already obsessed with faces in close-up.
Acting
Inga Landgré's Nelly: naive, cruel, and utterly magnetic.

Director
Ingmar Bergman
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Bergman later disowned this film, calling it 'a catastrophe'—but it's fascinating to see him wrestling with theatrical melodrama before finding his voice.
The 'crisis' of the title refers to a turning point in a disease—fitting for a film about small-town moral rot disguised as respectability.