Charlotte asks for a friend to escort her away by train. Eva goes to the grave of her departed son, and her husband ineffectively tries to soothe her ailing sister. In the morning Charlotte prepares for her departure. Upon reaching the landing she starts shouting, 'Mama, come!' Hearing this impassioned exchange, her disabled younger sister painfully forces herself out of her bed and starts crawling up to the stairs to where Eva and Charlotte are arguing. Eva's husband overhears this unexpectedly heightened exchange, but wisely decides not to participate and interfere. Mother and daughter begin an impassioned rediscovery and clarification of their past relationship. She gets up, goes into the living room and sees Eva there also awake and not sleeping. At night, Charlotte wakes up from a nightmare: it seems that Eva is choking her. She plans to take a flight home, and buy a new car for herself, as a measure of her altruism.

Before going to bed, Charlotte decides to make a gift of her own car to her daughter. She immediately re-performs the same prelude after Eva finishes in her own preferred interpretation of the music. She makes a gift of her own wrist watch to her younger paralyzed daughter, and listens to Eva playing Prelude No. The presence of her younger paralyzed daughter in Eva's house is shocking to the aging mother. As part of her day-to-day life, Eva takes care of her disabled and paralyzed sister Helena (Lena Nyman), whom she has taken out of the hospital into her own home she appears to be the only person who can understand her sister's limited speech ability. It is gradually learned through her dialogue with her mother that her life has had a large number of unfortunate setbacks: a husband (Halvar Björk) she respects, but does not really have affection for, their son drowned when only 4 years old, and Charlotte never appears to have loved Eva as a mother normally loves a daughter. Eva's main concern is to be the mistress of her home, wife, mother and loving sister. Eva is not as talented as the mother (despite the fact that she has written two books, and has a passing ability at playing the piano). Her mother is a world-renowned pianist, somewhat eccentric, aging, and has survived several husbands. She has not seen her for over seven years. Eva (Liv Ullmann), wife of the village pastor, invites her mother Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) for a visit to her village.

Cast and crew autumn sonata