Part 1
The Nymphette: or, Prologue
“Let him love you.”
In which American exploitation director Joseph Sarno goes to the Swedish countryside and briefly finds his muse. Before she was the toast of the arthouse sexploitation crowd, before she made Eugénie with Spanish director Jess Franco, Marie Liljedahl was a former ballerina and model, plucked from obscurity to become the Inga. While Franco may have seen a perfectly corruptible nymphette in young Liljedahl, Sarno saw Inga as a dramatic art film, in fact, never intending to shine the the spotlight on the Liljedahl character at all, but her star shone so bright, it eclipsed the rest of the cast. It’s hard to say exactly what Sarno’s original cut of the film looked like before notorious exploitation marketer Jerry Gross got his hands on it, but his vision was always to emphasize the resilience of the fair sex. In his own words, “it’s about strong women, actually.”
How this film came into existence, and the reasons surrounding its surprise success are manyfold. Context is needed to help understand how exploiteer Joseph W. Sarno, five years into his directorial career, ended up making an artsy Scandinavian sex film, a mega-hit in America1, and the highest grossing picture of his entire 40-year career. I’m not an expert. Tim Lucas is (and will hopefully complete his Joe Sarno book before the decade is over), but in the meantime, I’ll try my best to give a proper backstory.
Inga was made in August, 19672. Officially, the Hollywood production code was still in effect, more or less, until 1968 (there’s no hard end date like there is for when it went into effect on July 1, 1934). For much of the decade, sexploitation directors had been flaunting the code by simply not putting their films through the usual MPAA channels. If you had a film print, and connections with a scummy theater that would agree to put up some marketing posters and run your reels through a projector, you could get your film in front of an audience and make some money.
Somewhere in this wild wild west of relaxing censorship rules came the Swedish sex film. Apparently American exploitation directors like Sarno couldn’t churn out the sex flicks fast enough for demand, so producers started importing titles, rebranding them and using savvy promotional tactics to get butts in dirty seats. Inga was a unique mash-up, a Swedish sex film made by an American director, featuring an all Swedish cast and crew3. The audience for these films wasn’t exactly discerning, but they weren’t idiots either. You couldn’t take an American film crew to Sweden and make a fake Swedish sex film (part of the allure was the otherness of the foreign language, and the beauty of the foreign girls). You couldn’t bullshit, you had to really do it.
So, Joe Sarno really did it. He often vacationed in Sweden with his wife (rumors abound about their swinging lifestyle), and had done some work there a few years prior as a supervisor on a documentary shoot. The obvious move was to pair work and play, and make his own Swedish sex film. He knew enough of the language to comfortably direct, although he says he didn’t really need to, as he directs through faces.
When viewed through the lens of Sarno’s prior 60s work, it’s surprisingly chaste. The most explicit thing here is young Inga touching herself below the camera line4. Interestingly, Inga doesn’t actually factor into the main plot until 35 minutes in, only after we’ve been introduced to the melodrama around her scheming aunt Greta, with her high maintenance boyfriend and her financial troubles that need solving. Orphaned Inga shows up on her doorstep as the answer to both these problems, as Greta knows of an older man that likes them young, and who also happens to control her monthly salary. It doesn’t get as dark as you might expect—Inga may be naïve, but she’s not a helpless pawn, and she’s never put through Sadean suffering.
Inga is more “coming-of-age” than Sarno’s usual “don’t-feel-good.” Not only was this a breakout hit for him, but a turning point in his exploitation career. His eyes were widened, however briefly, to a broader world beyond 42nd Street, south Florida and Brooklyn lofts. For Sarno in the late 1960s, it seems that the possibilities for what an exploitation picture could be opened up—softer, more poetic, and featuring a protagonist who is not punished at the end, but just beginning her journey. Who knew?
“Shall we make love?”
Part 2
Inga the Second: or, The Seduction
“You’ve seen me before. Three years ago to be exact.”
A rare Joe Sarno sequel, The Seduction of Inga opens not long after the end of the first film, the ingénue now 19-years old, and in full color. Marie Liljedahl, the girl behind the stoic mask, had become a diva in-between films, carrying with her a little French poodle and a new movie star attitude. Inga, the character, is not the same little girl either: no money, no job, and abandoned in the big city of Stockholm by Karl, the man she sailed away with on a houseboat at the end of the first film. Alone, she’s quickly assailed on all sides by those looking to take advantage of her cherubic face, apple-shaped bottom and generally agreeable demeanor.
Director Joe Sarno was never one for sequels, in fact, this is the only one he ever made, but he was no doubt feeling the pressure after the surprise mega-hit success of the original. Viewers of both will notice a real sea change in styles between the films. Inga was a low-key, dramatic art film shot in black-and-white to bring out the bubbling sensuality. Inga 2 (as Joe and his wife called it) is decidedly more flower-powered, and much less subtle in its messaging of love-conquers-all, except when corrupted.
The psych-rock soundtrack and English dubbing5 makes it clear that new producers Unicorn Enterprises thought they had a real countercultural hit on their hands with this one, their own white Emmanuelle they could milk for a dozen more sequels. That did not end up happening, for a couple reasons: it wasn’t a box-office smash like the original, and Liljedahl, who found fame difficult to handle (coupled with what Sarno called “personal problems”), retired from acting just a few years later, all but putting a nail in the coffin of whatever Inga series Unicorn might have had planned.
It’s probably for the best, because The Seduction of Inga is fairly aimless, and centering the entire story around Liljedahl’s character shows the cracks in her charisma, i.e. she has none. The problem is that Inga doesn’t come off as the liberated and sexually awakened young girl you’d expect based on her newfound independence. Instead, she’s like a vacuous elder tween bopping from rock star boy to daddy figure in mini skirts and babydoll dresses. The film suffers from some of the same issues that plagued Jess Franco’s Eugenie. “We never see quite enough fear and confusion in her eyes…her pouty pettiness and air of naivety carry her only so far,” writes film critic Stephen Thrower about Liljedahl’s performance in that film. That said, there is some mild amusement in watching the consistently vacant stare on her young face as the drama unfolds around her.
The producers failed to understand what made the original film so successful—its very “foreignness.” Taking the sequel out of the Swedish countryside, adding hippie rock music and English dubbing makes it just another dirty movie, easily lost in the glut of sexploitation pictures from the era. It doesn’t stand out. Except where it does: as opposed to the relatively chaste first film, this one is what we’d call “hard softcore,” no penetration, but pretty damn close. On that same note, like the first film, nothing ever reaches Sadean levels of debasement, though there is an incestuous father/daughter relationship that would make the Marquis smile. Still, the darkest sexual fantasy on display here is women wearing short dresses without panties.
The ending leaves things wide-open for a continuation of the series, something that would never materialize6. It seems the bloom of the Swedish rose was fully wilted by the early 70s, when American exploiteers were either moving into hardcore or horror (or, like Joe D’Amato, hardcore horror), and audiences were looking for something more salacious and less coy. Young Inga was already becoming old hat.
“Right or wrong, I do love the guy, so I’m taking another chance. I hope it works. If not, I may be back. Who knows?”
Part 3
Another Inga: or, The Reboot
“I want to go home.”
Not only does Maid in Sweden feature a main character named Inga, but also a sister character named Greta. As in, they’re not even trying to hide the fact that this is an attempt to capitalize on the success of the original Inga film starring Marie Liljedahl. In fact, new-Inga, Christina Lindberg, looks so much like Liljedahl that I wonder if The Cannon Group purposely intended to hoodwink audiences into thinking this was a continuation of that series. It’s not, but it can definitely be viewed as part of the loose Inga Universe that flamed out after only two films.
Liljedahl’s retirement from acting in 1970 surely upset more than a few exploiteers who thought they had found a golden goose in the young, Swedish nymphet. But success and fame burned too hot for the young actress and her brief, but intense, run ended after only three years. Producers dried their tears and quickly moved on, replacing Liljedahl with the latest, greatest model: upgraded tits, an even rounder face, but the same ability to play an innocent, coming-of-age nymph thrust into the new (and often violent) world of womandom in the age of free love sexual independence.
Christina Lindberg is up to the task, but brings a slightly more mature vibe to the Inga character than Liljedahl’s original portrayal—namely, her more voluptuous body makes the character less childlike, and thus, believably able to partake in more adult activities, something the now fully-uncensored Motion Picture Association allowed for.
The film itself feels like a mashup of the previous two connected stories: Inga moves in with a family member that introduces her to sex, she’s taken advantage of because of her naivete, and she even has a similar scene of bedroom self-love and bodily-discovery. Furthermore, Maid in Sweden features flashy discotheque interludes, a definite reminder to the audience that we’re in the swinging 70s, no matter what country.
The start of Inga’s trouble occurs when she falls prey to the advances of her sister’s pushy artist friend. I take that back, she’s raped and emotionally manipulated into believing the sex forced upon her was consensual. In a particularly gross scene, she even goes on a cute bike ride through the city with her rapist the next day, and has sex with him again the following night.
But in case you were wondering what kind of picture this really is, Lindberg has a slow-motion shower scene in the final act of the film, the water droplets bouncing off her nude body (a scene used extensively in the marketing of the film). It’s this kind of artless scene which makes clear just how much better the original Inga film, and to a lesser extent, its sequel, are to this loosely connected cash-in.
Sarno’s original film had artistic intentions, and succeeds at creating an atmosphere of desperation, innocence and sensuality. This film is much more interested in leering at Lindberg’s formidable features, and not much else. And look, I understand the allure. Viewed as a standalone film, detached from the Sarno originals, it certainly takes inspiration from those stories and ups the ante for 70s audiences demanding more, but it’s all surface level stuff. A beautiful surface, but fairly grimy underneath.
Footnotes:
- A hit in America, Germany and Italy, but not Sweden: “The Swedes hated it…because an American did a film like this,” according to Sarno. “The Swedish newspapers started a campaign against me immediately when I landed…they didn’t like the idea of Swedish actresses being in an American sex film….They killed it at the box office.” ↩︎
- The Swedish title, “Jag – en oskuld”, translates to “I, a Virgin.” ↩︎
- Most of the actors were recruited through an open casting call and the film was shot in three or four weeks with a small, but very professional crew. “You could live on those sets,” gushed Peggy. ↩︎
- According to the Sarnos, what was happening outside the frame during the sex scenes was very real, “otherwise, you can’t fake this!” explained Peggy. She went on to describe Liljedahl as “a very, very sexual person. She just is.” ↩︎
- The version of Inga I watched was the Swedish Version with English subtitles, which is definitely the best way to view the film. There is also an English dubbed version available. Reportedly the Rialto Theater originally played the subtitled version then re-released it with the English dubbing. The version of The Seduction of Inga I watched was English dubbed. A Swedish language version reportedly exists, but unfortunately hasn’t been found. ↩︎
- After Liljedahl’s retirement, The Cannon Group, which produced the first Inga film, would release the Inga-adjacent Maid in Sweden in 1971 starring that other angel-faced Swede, and new #1 Scandinavian nymphette, Christina Lindberg. ↩︎
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