A high school in a small city. Torben and Ninni are deeply infatuated with each other but their parents dislike the pair seeing each other. After graduation Torben joins the army and when Ninni discovers that she is pregnant her parents send her to a farm in Denmark to bear her child.

Krister and his fiancé Brita return to Stockholm after a stay in Italy. Shortly upon their return Krister learns that all his assets left to him by his father has disappeared. Together with Brita he tries to obtain justice in a aristocratic and corrupt legal system.

Cecilia is in hospital after being subjected to an attempt on her life. Her husband is called to the hospital. Cecilia deliriously mentions a mutual friend. The husband seeks out the friend.

When 'Vogler's Magnetic Health Theater' comes to town, there's bound to be a spectacle. Reading reports of a variety of supernatural disturbances at Vogler's prior performances abroad, the leading townspeople (including the police chief and medical examiner) request that their troupe provide them a sample of their act, before allowing them public audiences. The scientific-minded disbelievers try to expose them as charlatans, but Vogler and his crew prove too clever for them.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.