Synopsis of the film from MUBI:
In 1906, a poor farmer in the backwoods of Finland struggles to make a living for his wife and four children. He hears about a new law that will allow equal voting rights to all citizens. He attends a Socialist meeting and starts believing that everything will get better after the upcoming election.Read More »
Synopsis
Vappu Kankare – a fiery redhead and priest’s daughter – first competes with, irritates and then admires the ambitious co-habitant, Jalmar “Jali” Kinnu. After the studies, Vappu and Jali get married, but the marriage is disappointing. Not one to be easily put in her place, Vappu takes action.Read More »
The fifth and last film of Nyrki Tapiovaara (1911–40), released posthumously after his tragically premature death during the last days of the Winter War, and finished by one of the film’s actors, Hugo Hytönen, with some help from Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen, future collaborators on The White Reindeer. As with Tapiovaara’s earlier films Stolen Death (1938) and Kaksi Vihtoria (“Two Henpecked Husbands”, 1939), Blomberg was the film’s producer and cinematographer, while Kuosmanen had one of her first major roles in the film. The film was an adaptation of recent Nobel laureate F. E. Sillanpää’s 1932 novel and, along with Teuvo Tulio’s rural melodramas of the late ’30s (including one Sillanpää adaptation, the now-lost Nuorena nukkunut), one of the crucial trope-setters for Finnish cinema in the years to come, with its depictions of breathtaking landscapes, love on the hayfield, and drunken brawls at country dances.Read More »
One year in the life of a family of reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland. Jessica Oreck’s intimate, gorgeously lensed documentary follows brothers Aarne and Lasse Aatsinki. The film is a study of hard work, hard earned leisure, and the intricate bond between man and nature that makes up life above the Arctic Circle.Read More »
A thriller set in turn-of-the-century Helsinki, Stolen Death uses elements of German expressionism to tell the story of Finnish resistance fighters smuggling arms to overthrow the Tsarist occupiers of Finland. Tapiovaara stresses the divided loyalties of the Finnish bourgeoisie, torn between preserving their privileged economic position and taking a risky stand for an independent Finland.Read More »
A precursor of sorts to The White Reindeer (1952), featuring the same female lead, Mirjami Kuosmanen, and the same cinematographer, Erik Blomberg, who was Kuosmanen’s husband and went on to direct as well as shoot the later film. Disappointment in this film was one of the reasons that led Blomberg and Kuosmanen to make The White Reindeer as an independent production. The film’s nominal producer was Michael Powell, but in fact the production was supervised by John Seabourne (for some reason billed “Jussi” Seabourne in the opening credits), a close friend of Powell’s and the editor of many of the Powell & Pressburger classics of the 1940s. Read More »
Quote:
A lawyer pays a visit to Matti Ojanperä (Matti Pellonpää), a bum living under a bridge in the Helsinki harbour, to inform him that he is about to inherit an American aunt of his. The sum 1,000,000 Fmk would be his, if only he meets the qualifications set by his aunt.
He must show that he is capable of ‘living properly’ and possessing a ‘respectable occupation and a family he can support’. Otherwise the money would go to a foundation the chairman of which the lawyer himself happens to be!Read More »
Probably writer-director Peter von Bagh’s masterpiece in the documentary genre, a personal love letter to the city of Helsinki as it once was and as it might have been, taking the form of a collage of film clips, photographs, paintings, song and music fragments, quotations from Finnish writers and von Bagh’s own musings, read by himself and the actors Erja Manto and Sulevi Peltola. A real treat, not to be missed by any fan of Finnish cinema or the “city symphony” genre.Read More »
Blending the vampire and werewolf mythology into a fascinatingly unique and inspired synthesis which also adds elements from pre-Christian folklore, filmmaker Erik Blomberg’s simple, lyrical parable about how all actions have consequences has the immediacy, intimacy and potency of an eloquently spun scary campfire yarn. Skillfully directed, produced, edited, co-written and shot in gorgeous monochromatic black and white by Blomberg, who began photographing movies back in the 30’s and made only four other films before spending the rest of his career doing documentaries for television, this plainly done and elegantly understated debut feature benefits greatly from not only its powerfully direct and unpretentious story, but also from its highly unusual and intriguing period setting.Read More »