One night, Lora Wilding (Eva Henning), shoots her husband Walter (Georg Rydeberg) and flees into the night. As she is driving down the road, she has an accident and crashes her car. She is unhurt and begins walking away leaving her hat on the ground near the accident. Police Inspector Kjell Myrman (Sven Lindberg) is the lead investigator.
Lora met Walter after the close of the war. She had been celebrating with his brother, Jack Wilding (Sture Lagerwall). Jack was in love with Lora, but she fell in love with Walter. Walter swooped in and married her. Lora was unaware that Walter was only after her money and is having an affair with another woman, Jimmie Hedstrom (Sonja Wigert). After Lora’s father died she was left with an aunt, Annie Eriksson (Hjordis Petterson), her cousin, Ollie Lindaeus (Erik Strandmark), who is also in love with her, and the family attorney, Fredrik Sjovall (Hugo Bjorne) to comfort her.
After the car accident, Lora ends up wandering the streets and hiding from the police as Inspector Myrman conducts his investigation. He finds out that Lora wanted a divorce, but Walter refused. This is the motive Myrman was looking for, so a manhunt begins.
Tired of hiding, Lora decides to turn herself in only to find that Walter was already dead when she shot him. The cause of death turns out to be cyanide poisoning. This doesn’t exactly clear Lora since she could have poisoned him before shooting him, but Lora was not the only one who had a problem with Walter, or who knew how to get a hold of cyanide.
“Hidden in the Fog” AKA “I dimma dold” AKA “In the Mist” was released in 1953 and was directed by Lars-Eric Kjellgren. It is a lesser-known Swedish crime thriller with some nice noir elements. The movie was based on the 1951 novel by Vic Sunesson. Sunesson was also part of the team that wrote the screenplay.
The plot was interesting. It starts out with a police hunt for a suspected murderer. Halfway through there is a plot twist and it changes into a “who-done-it”, complete with a gathering of the suspects to reveal the killer. Although the movie lacks some polish and the twist isn’t totally original, it’s still really good. Some of the film is told in flashbacks that are short and to the point, which keeps the momentum of the main storyline from getting lost in the context. The noir elements are also a nice addition to the film.
There is a discussion by a couple of the characters about the 1944 American noir film “Laura”. Some similarities can be seen in both films, but they are used differently to propel each respective story along.
In essence, it ended up being a really good little noir style film. There are a lot of Swedish films that are just plain good. This is one of them.