In Det brinner en eld the performers of the National Theatre are rehearsing Shakespeare’s As You Like It, when their country is occupied by foreign powers and the theatre closed. Some of the actors join the resistance, some of them hope for things to improve and some become traitors, thus mirroring the country at large. Det brinner en eld is the first Swedish film dealing with World War II in a more or less direct way, but even at this late stage in the war (the film was released in August 1943) the countries involved could not be mentioned by name due to Swedish censorship. But contemporary audiences were in no doubt whatsoever that the film depicted the German occupation of Norway. All people representing the occupying nation have German-sounding names, and military uniforms and banners are created to look like German ones without being exact replicas.

The film was a huge financial success, though some critics found it slightly anemic. Molander wrote the script together with poet Karl Ragnar Gierow, one of the first Swedish intellectuals to take an overt anti-Nazi stand.

Jon Wengström – Svenska Filminstitutet