A minor scandal breaks out in a fictional Swedish town when student Katja shows up at her graduation ball wearing her brother’s tailcoat. Such misconduct cannot be tolerated by the town’s conservative powers, whose informal leader is the widow of the county priest, played by the film’s director Karin Swanstrom herself. Rejected by her own father, Katja is forced to flee to the rural manor of a friend. Karin Swanstrom is one of six known women film directors in Swedish cinema during the silent era. The comedy Flickan i Frack, based on a novel by Hjalmar Bergman published the previous year, would be Swanstrom’s fourth and final film as a director.  She had made her directorial debut three years earlier with the farce Boman på utställningen (Boman at the Exhibition), which was shot on location during the Gothenburg Exhibition of 1923 and is her only other surviving film. Despite her limited output as a film director, Karin Swanström’s influence on Swedish cinema was nevertheless enormous. From 1933 to 1941, she served as artistic advisor for the leading Swedish film company, Svensk Filmindustri, thereby shaping Swedish film production during the 1930s – a decade often dismissed for its focus on lighter entertainment. The sole surviving nitrate print of Flickan i Frack was duplicated in 1973, but for a long time the only accessible element was an acetate print with English flash titles. After a Desmet print with full-length intertitles was made in 2008, the film has become one of the most frequently screened Swedish silent films that was not directed by the internationally acclaimed masters Victor Sjöström or Mauritz Stiller. This renewed interest in the film cannot be explained solely by today’s desire to rediscover forgotten women directors. With its entertaining cross-dressing theme, Flickan i Frack invites queer readings, something that can also be applied to the colourful women’s collective living at the manor where Katja seeks solace after her scandalous challenge to gender norms at the ball.

Magnus Rosborn