The Games of Countess Dolingen

In this eerie, atmospheric tale, a young woman is on a train when she sees some people she thinks she knows from her childhood. On arriving home, her husband tells her that a certain countess has died. At that point, the film cuts to a scene of the countess singing in a mausoleum while the visual image of the graveyard’s many tombstones passes before one’s eyes. Back home, the husband — also a “father-figure” — is looking over his collection of wooden angels. Some time elapses, and he surreptitiously sees a thief come down through the chimney, steal some things, and then leave. To combat any recurrence, he builds an iron, escape-proof cage around the fireplace, and then goes away on a trip. When he comes back, he finds the thief dead in the cage. Thus far, the camera has only shown the husband in profile or from the back. Then there is another story about a young girl, with a spiteful, nasty mother, who is trying to cope with her own attraction to a man.