Cinema of the World

Passages selected from Peter Cowie's book Finnish Cinema:

There is no doubt that Nyrki Tapiovaara has become a legendary figure in Finnish cinema - a Keats or a Vigo. And one uses the term "legendary" with deliberate emphasis, for Tapiovaara's achievement was to revolt against the stereotyped cinema of his time; in many respects his work appears today as coarse-cut, perfunctory, and even conventional. But the fact remains that this man, who directed a mere five feature films, has been re-discovered by the younger generation, and recognised as being far ahead of his time. He possessed two prime virtues: he was anxious to use the cinema as a means of commenting on his society, and he had sufficient cinematic talent to cut a swathe through the clichés of contemporary Finnish film. "I believe in the vitality of film," he wrote in Kirjallisuuslehti in 1936. "I believe that it is only waiting for young people, free from the chains of money and with no instructions to smear love on every reel, simply to speak the truth, to show the world as they see it. That will be beautiful."
...
So here was a young man flexing his muscles, and trying out gingerly, yet also blithely, the styles and the genres at his disposal. Tapiovaara began as a critic, stage director, and an energetic force in the film society movement. During the early Thirties he was a director in the Labour Theatre and was involved with a cultural group known as "The Fire Carriers" (Tulenkantajat). Stolen Death (Varastettu kuolema, 1938) is by far the most arresting and unorthodox of his works, as slippery as an eel to classify and often audacious in its rhythm and fragmented time structure. Taken from a short story by Runar Schildt, entitled "The Meat Mincer," it unfolds the grey, dubious years at the start of the century when "activists" were engaged in an underground campaign to thwart Tsarist Russia. Helsinki is depicted as a city of empty streets and closed windows. It is the perfect setting for a melodrama, and from the opening shot, of a door handle turning slowly behind the credits, Tapiovaara flings himself into the mood with relish. People keep out of sight, or else flit surreptitiously through the shadows. Robert Hedman is attempting to muster guns and ammunition for the anti-Russian forces. Claesson is the villainous broker who wants to betray him and his associates. And Manja is the plump, flirtacious girl who moves between them in a state of confused loyalty.

So the stage is set for a derring-do. We are introduced to a clandestine printing press in a room barred eerily with shadows. False passports are concocted by a garrulous and spirited old woman in a basement shop filled with bric-à-brac like Michael Redgrave's antique establishment in Mr. Arkadin. Vigilantes prowl the dark streets.

The script must have looked unbelievably banal. But Tapiovaara enlivens each scene with his own idiosyncratic quirks and fancies. When Hedman and Claesson confront each other for the first time, there is a fierce argument. Hedman brands his enemy as a blackmailer and informer (though there is more than a hint of sexual rivalry below the surface), and as he jumps to his feet in indignation, he strikes the ceiling lamp and it swings wildly to and fro, its light dancing across Claesson's sly, mocking features as if in wit.

This strain of visual irony persists throughout the film, and it calls to mind Lindsay Anderson, another "committed" director whose aesthetic sense has enabled him to surmount the problems of presenting sombre social realities. Soon, Tapiovaara is twisting the movie habits of the time to his own purpose. Manja, whose sexual aplomb is suggested in a shot of her drawing on Claesson's cigar (and in a later scene, her blowing out of Hedman's match) continually has her audience - as well as her two lovers - on the leash. One moment she is vulnerable in furs; the next she is aggressive and flamboyant, letting her coat fall open to reveal her body wreathed in bands of machine-gun ammunition. As she and Hedman kiss for the first time, Tapiovaara moves in with monstrous, indulgent, soft-focus close-ups, following the couple as they lean back over a piano, and the photograph of Robert's girlfriend crashes to the floor. How many times has one observed such a scene in Hollywood romances of the same period? Tapiovaara derides it all with consummate panache. It is as though he felt that Hollywood only made itself look ridiculous with its perpetual emphasis on passion and the almighty power of the human kiss.

Stolen Death, however, is too complex for its own good. So packed is each composition, so frequent the changes in focal length, and so rapid the pace of the dialogue, that one has difficulty in grasping the story [...spoilers]

The film confirms Tapiovaara's talent for treating familiar material in a fresh and eccentric manner. It also shows him to be quite nonchalant in his approach to narrative and montage. Most directors regard the editing phase as the most important in the creation of a film; for Tapiovaara, the shooting was clearly the vital stage. Stolen Death bears a strong resemblance to Sjöberg's They Staked Their Lives (Med livet som insats, 1939). Both films marked the close of an era, a period in which cinema (both in Finland and Sweden) had been regarded by its practitioners as a means of entertainment pure and simple. Tapiovaara felt that he could entertain, certainly; but he also had a sixth sense that enabled him to catch the mood of the time. The idealism of the Communist intelligentsia. The unspoken fear of the Russian Bear, with the Winter War only months away. The dread of informers. The reawakening of patriotism in the Finnish soul. The slavish respect for the authorities that made the upper classes suspicious of any underground activity (Robert's mother entreats him to "not conspire against the crown"). Affter all, Projektio, the first Finnish film society, was being watched with a gimlet eye by the State Police, and Tapiovaara, one of its organisers, may have had the society's gatherings in mind in describing the activists' furtive meetings in Stolen Death.

Unlike most directors who attacked the Hollywood ethos, Tapiovaara never produced solemn, sententious films. All his work has and apprehension and perception akin to Renoir's. He likes and respects human beings; he scorn their crassness and pretension. His influence on subsequent generations of Finnish directors has proved extremely strong. Jarva, for instance, made in Rally and When the Heaven's Fall the kind of movie Tapiovaara would have approved of - in other words, a Trojan Horse within the walls of Capitalism and the Bourgeoisie.





http://filepost.com/files/7d96893b/Varastettu kuolema.avi/
http://filepost.com/files/652b2fdm/Varastettu kuolema.srt/

http://www.filesonic.com/file/1559975051/Varastettu kuolema.avi
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1559948081/Varastettu kuolema.srt

no pass