It tells the story of a young girl, married to an older farmer, who elopes with a handsome stranger, crossing dangerous rapids on a small boat in the process.

In a remote place of Sweden, men working on the digging of a canal to dry up a marsh are housed in the nearby farms.

To fight the attraction she unbvoluntarily feels for him, she tries to concentrate on helping Johan cleaning his fishing nets.

Once Johan has left, she can't avoid confessing to the stranger that every summer her mother in law comes back to harass her.

She does not like when he makes fun of her old husband and when she meets an old fisherman who tells her that the stranger brings a new 'summer-girl' every year to his island, she feels regret and mourns what she has lost.

As Finland was still at war with the Soviet Union at the time (the peace would only be signed in October 1920 with the Treaty of Tartu) Stiller chose to shoot it in Sweden, near the city of Kalix.

No tricks or stuntmen were used for the filming and Stiller paid credit to the courage of Urho Somersalmi who steered the boat through the rapids and of Jenny Hasselqvist, who was the first woman to make the travel down the Kamlunge.

The managers of the local log floating association advised against the attempt as the journey through the rapids was normally done with a crew of seven men.

He was very enthusiastic about the acting and the technical characteristics of the film but did not hide his disappointment about the happy ending introduced by Stiller.

Henri Langlois, creator of the Cinémathèque Française considered that it was one of the three most important lost films.

However, the largest part of one of the original negatives was found in the early 1960s, and used as the starting point for the film's 1974 black and white restoration and subsequent yellow and orange tinted version in 2001, which is now available on DVD with an original soundtrack by Alexander Popov.

[5] Reviews were mixed at the time of the premiere, exuberant praise alternating with hesitant, sometimes even negative assessments.

Some reviewers dismissed the film with general phrases, summaries of content, and a few kind words about the actors.

Svenska Dagbladet wrote: ″This is one of the director's best works, and in all respects a film of high rank [...] what was in The Song of the Scarlet Flower dull, artificial and incoherent, is in Johan strong, genuine and solidly built.″ [5]