A quick overview of Swedish film history, featuring a breathtaking cavalry of scenes from about 170 films.
Private detective Ture Sventon is visited by his friend Mr. Omar of the Arabic desert. Sventon decides to travel with Mr. Omar on his flying carpet to Paris. However, Sventon almost exclusively lives on cream puffs, and to transport these across the continent, he needs a portable fridge. He pays a visit to Stockholms foremost fridge inventor and are introduced to a new fridge which shrinks and deshrinks the food. The inventor is afraid his new invention will be stolen, and thus Sventon brings it to Paris where it gets stolen.
Italian singer Mario Vanni visits the Royal Opera in Stockholm and fall in love with ballet dancer Linda Corina.
In Stockholm in the year 2248 an excavation leads to the discovery of 45,000 meters of film from the 1940's master director Hasse Ekman . The material is in a disarray but the Society for Ancient Film Research compiles the material after what is believed to have been the master's artistic intentions
A movie director is approached by his old math teacher with a great movie idea: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. The director rejects the idea, but subsequent events in the life of a writer, a friend of the director's, and a young prostitute he loves seem to prove the math teacher's idea.
When Inga Brantemo goes on a business trip to Italy, her husband Bertil gets romantically involved with Christina Lovén, whose father is a book publisher. When Inga returns, Bertil has a difficult time trying to explain who the woman the neighbors saw in the Brantemo home was. Bertil is an author and it doesn't get easier when he and his wife gets invited to Christina's father to talk business.
Dan, aged 19, leaves his home after a quarrel with his father. At the side of the country road he meets a traveling theater company who has run out of money. He falls in love with the young actress Pia and together they leave, meeting a string of peculiar characters: a vagabond, a friendly vicar and a cynical adventurer.
1813. The Swedish army is fighting in the War of the Sixth Coalition. The popular general Von Döbeln is arrested for sending the army against the French in breach of orders by the crown prince. At the court martial he is sentenced to death but is pardoned by the king and sent to prison instead. A group of conspirators are planning to set him free and make him their leader in a coup d'etat.
In an occupied country, the people rise to throw off the occupants. This includes Jens the farmer and his three sons who successfully perform sneak attacks on the invading army.