Intill helvetets portar

This is actually a very shrewd and thought-provoking film where the script by Sven Stolpe is the main thing, which makes the film rather uninteresting cinematographically but the more interesting intellectually. A brilliant professor of nuclear physics is awarded the Nobel prize and is prepared to sacrifice anything for the truth and for the progress of his research, while a trusted student of his becomes very critical against his results and decides to fight the progress of nuclear physics by any means. It's a rather metaphysical speculation but deals very much with the question of conscience, and as the professor actually makes a breakthrough with a vital discovery of a shortcut to nuclear fission, the movement against his work gathers momentum, and at the same time his only son is hospitalized for an incurable cancer, and he decides to turn his research away from nuclear physics to do anything to save his boy. This crisis alters his mind, and he becomes afraid of his own work and its unserveyable possibilities. An alien power, who has sponsored him, insists on his continuing his work, they subject him to extortion and threat of abduction if he abandons it, whereupon he makes a decision.

This was the last film role of the great celebrated Swedish actor Lars Hanson, and it's a brilliant performance - you will never forget him after this. The director is Göran Gentele, a genius whose career was cut short by an accident, but this film is one of the crown jewels in his limited but invaluable production.