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
Atka Natas is a secret agent from the oppressive regime of Liquidatzia. He visits his estranged wife Vera, a chemist who is involved with a group of exiles trying to smuggle their compatriots out of Liquidatzia. Almkvist, a local policeman and former lover of Vera's, contacts her while investigating the death of one of the refugees. Natas has a list of agents operating in the host country and wants to sell them to the Americans. However before he can do so, Vera tries to kill him, after an argument about getting her parents out of Liquidatzia.
At a parish meeting Åsa-Nisse suggests that they should hire a common home help, who could give their wives some relief by staying one week at each household. The meeting assents and decides that the order of her rotation should be established by lot. The two bachelors of the village claim their right to the home help as well, arguing that they are also taxpayers. When Elsa Haglund arrives from Gothenburg she starts her first week of work at one of the two bachelors, the village shop-keeper Sjökvist. He is immediately infatuated by her and begins a flirtation. At the end of the week Elsa happens to meet the other bachelor, Eric Broo, called "the singing farmer". She falls in love with him, but doesn't know how to hook him, as he is very shy and unskilled in courting women. In the meantime Åsa-Nisse, the village rogue, carries out some of his pranks.
The maid quits at the Sommer family household and because no one in the family can cook they desperately needs a new maid. The son in the family, Åke, is a famous actor at the theater and when the up and coming actress Marianne (who also has a crush on the famous Åke) hears about the Sommers needing a new maid, she seizes the opportunity and goes undercover as a maid to get closer to Åke and the big roles in the theater.
An out-of-work musician is desperate for work and when his best friend sees an add requesting a cellist he signs him up. However, the work is for a female, so he creates the character Märta Letterström and joins the trio at a small-town hotel. But being a woman is not as easy as you think.
Jan-Erik Widgren meets the lonely Bertha Olsson, a woman struggling with alcoholism. Though Bertha is already linked to Caligula, Jan-Erik's heartless teacher, she begins a relationship with the boy anyway. When Caligula learns that Jan-Erik is having an affair with Bertha, he begins to torture his student psychologically. He reserves his cruelest behavior for Bertha, however, which results in a tragic turn of events.
The old Victor Branzell has a grandson, Alf, who is in love with a clerk in a glove shop, Lilian Lind. But Lilian with her simple background doesn't get accepted in the circles where Alf belongs, and they have now reached the conclusion that they can't have a future together. Marriage is impossible. Victor summons Lilian and Alf and starts telling them his life story.
City girl Emma marries the farmer Nicklas but gets involved in a love triangle with his brother Ragnar.
At a meeting at the Salvation Army a female soldier tells the story of her life.