The restored copy of this magnificent movie is a wonder : the country landscapes (the hills, the -moody-river ,the forest) are a feast for the eye ; it looks like a legend ,(one of the scenes recalls "Jungfrukällan ",the virgin spring" which Bergman would transfer to the screen in 1959) , blending a repressive religion and superstitions (the river fairy ,the would be maleficent power of the violin which plays devil's music)who made Jon , whose parents elope when his mother was engaged,an outcast , an accursed ,a pariah.

Jon's violin plays a prominent part in the story ,and the sequences of the rustic ball are among the best I have ever seen ; Jon got a raw deal :his parents' sins (if one can call a sin the right to choose the man you love) fall on his head and he's the black sheep of the village where he's considered a protégé of the fairies ,a heathen young man .

Marit is a feminist at a time the word was not invented : it took a lot of guts to say no to an arranged marriage in front of the whole congregation .

Both she and Jon are against the whole world ,and the history of long ago is about to repeat itself.

"Driver dagg faller regn" (after dew, rain)is not a pessimistic work though ; it gets through a message of tolerance ,of forgiveness and of hope :" the river" ,like in Frank Borzage 's eponymous silent film (1928),becomes a character ,and brings doom and redemption.

The score is tremendous, integrating folk music , including one old song performed by Mai Zetterling,who was known in Western Europa.

This is a very "Swedish" movie. If you want to understand us and our history - which for most people took place in what we call "allmogesamhället" = rural society - you should watch this movie! It is about our folk music, folk dances, folk tales, folk beliefs... about our wild nature, our hard winters, our strangely light and fair summer nights, our fairy stories, and our Christian faith.

It is also - and foremost - a great love story. One of the best that has ever been written! About a (comparatively) rich girl, who gives everything up to be able to live with the poor and despised man that she has fallen in love with. And it is about fatherly love, and about redemption, and the continuing of life in new generations...

To put it shortly: this movie is about life itself, and it is hardly possible to make a better movie, that would render so much happiness and hope and the feeling of meaning of life!

Big farmer Germund is planning a wedding for his daughter Marit with the local farmer boy, Mats. Everything seems to be going according to plan. But one day Marit meet with fiddler Jon, a bastard who enchants youth with his violin. Everything is just like the old reliable drawings. Folkmusic, barn dance photos, fights, rough fists groping the heroines bosoms, grand environmental images, the fresh fragrant of scouring-soap and lots of rustic atmosphere. In Mai Zetterling as farmer's daughter the director Gustaf Edgren has found the personified Swedish summer night, as both the seductive twilight and the sober dawn in her blond revelation. And Alf Kjellin as Jon in dark curly wig gives a solid interpretation of the fiddlers temperament and the abrupt shifts between melancholy and frivolity. Both Zetterling and Kjellin later moved on to become well known international film directors. "Driver dagg faller regn" was the first Swedish film to gross more than 1,5 million Swedish krona. It took more than ten years to break that box office record. Ingmar Bergmans "Smultronstället" (Wild strawberries) did in 1957.