A judge questions three actors about their new production, which is considered obscene. Their relations are complex: Sebastian is an unstable drunkard, in debt and guilty of killing his former business partner. He is involved with Thea. She is tense and fragile, prone to outbursts of rage, and is married to Sebastian's new partner, Hans. In a stark and purified form, Bergman returns to questions and images he always circled around: The exaltation and humiliation of the artist, the rebellion against the father, the images of God. A society which is at once the artist's audience and enemy.
