Diese selbsternannte „sommerleichte“ Filmkomödie erzählt die Geschichte einer Gruppe junger Studierender in einer schwedischen Kleinstadt, in deren Zentrum die gebildete und tüchtige Katja steht. Weil der Vater ausschließlich in die Garderobe ihres Bruders Curry investiert, geht die junge Frau in Ermangelung eines Abendkleides in dessen Frack auf den Abschlussball und löst damit einen gesellschaftlichen Skandal aus. Humorvoll behandelt Regisseurin Karin Swanström in ihrer letzten Regiearbeit große Sujets wie Konformität und Vielfalt, Feminismus und Gender-Rollen, Tradition und Neuerung – Themen, durch die der Film auch 2021 hochaktuell wirkt. Für die Restaurierung griff das Svenska Filminstitutet 2008 auf eine Umkopierung aus den 1970er Jahren zurück, fügte die originalen schwedischen Zwischentitel ein und ahmte die ursprünglichen Einfärbungen nach.

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FLICKAN I FRACK is a comedy heavily relying on the dialogue conveyed in the intertitles, almost to the point where one could say that it works, despite being silent. The script was written by Hjalmar Bergman, a famous novelist and playwright, who first tried his luck at scriptwriting for the cinema in the late 1910s, mainly for Victor Sjöström (he even joined the director in Hollywood for a few months in 1924). Many of Bergman’s film scripts were adaptations of his own works, and they don’t always work very well for the screen, but that for FLICKAN I FRACK, based on his own novel published the previous year, is arguably his best.
The film was directed by Karin Swanström, one of the few female filmmakers of the period. Swanström was also successful as an actress in the 1920s. In FLICKAN I FRACK she plays the widow of the county priest, shown to be pulling all the strings in the life of the small town, and has a memorable scene with Georg Blomstedt, in which they contemplate the fact that they are both approaching the end of their lives.

Jon Wengström, Catalogue Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2013