Risto Jarva 75 Years

A short excerpt off Onnenpeli by Risto Jarva (1965)


Rauli "Badding" Somerjoki: 'Bensaa suonissa' (off Bensaa suonissa by Risto Jarva, 1970)


Timo Tervo: 'Katseen kosketus' (off Mies, joka ei osannut sanoa ei by Risto Jarva, 1975)


An excerpt off Jäniksen vuosi by Risto Jarva (1977)

Today is the 75th birthday of Finnish film director Risto Jarva (15 July 1934 - 16 December 1977). You can read more about him here. In many ways Jarva was a product of his own time, whose works reflected the political ideas, social trends, fashions and general Zeitgeist of what was Finland in the 1960s and 1970s, and watching his often-topical films today, they might feel dated and even flawed in many ways, but for me Risto Jarva remains one of the most interesting directors this country has ever spawned, nevertheless.

Åke Lindman (1928 - 2009)

Finnish actor and director Åke Lindman has died at the age of 81. Lindman's best-known role is probably as private Lehto in Edwin Laine's war film Tuntematon sotilas ("The Unknown Soldier", 1955). In the 1950s Lindman also played in many other Finnish films, his rough looks often typecasting him in villain roles. Åke Lindman, who was also a professional footplayer in his youth, later became a film and TV director.


Stormkärs Maja/Myrskyluodon Maija (a 1975 TV series directed by Åke Lindman, with the famous theme music by Lasse Mårtenson)

Jörn Donner: Mustaa valkoisella (1968)

Kristiina Hautala: 'Kielletyt käskyt' (off Mustaa valkoisella, 1968)

More Kristiina Hautala @ YouTube

It was nice seeing Jörn Donner's (a renaissance man of Finland's Swedish-speaking minority, who has worked as a writer, film-maker & producer and politician) Mustaa valkoisella ("Black on White", 1968) again last weekend on YLE Teema. Here the non-actor Donner (surely a lost Scandinavian cousin to Humphrey Bogart) plays in his laconic style Juha Holm, a 36-year old fridge salesman who gets into a relationship with a 19-year old female clerk called Maria Constanza (Kristiina Halkola) from the same company.

We see in the film's very start how a magazine has chosen Holm, his wife (Liisamaija Laaksonen) and their two children "The Family of the Year", in a tightly cut narrative where a fussy voiceover tells about their immaculate modern family life; apparently a hollow facade which gradually starts to crumble during the film. Juha Holm, going through a mid-life crisis and being stressed by his job, is warned by his doctor about drinking and smoking too much. A surprisingly romantic and literary side of Holm, often appearing in the film only cold and detached, is revealed when he recites to Maria Constanza a love poem written by Pablo Neruda (a Chilean poet very much in vogue among the leftist Finnish youth of the day), only leaving her bemused and with no comment.

Partly a drama on relationships, partly a social satire, especially juicy are the comical scenes where are followed the desperate efforts of Holm's workmates (played by other amateur actors, Jukka Virtanen, a Jack of all trades in Finnish entertainment, and crooner/songwriter/popular composer Lasse Mårtenson) to create a commercial film to sell fridges, more or less unsuccessfully using female models in leotards as accessories. The beautifully restored film copy in its bright colours (Esko Nevalainen's cinematography won Jussi, Finnish counterpart to Academy Awards) essentially captures the late-60s Finnish Zeitgeist (oops, another over-used expression). Kristiina Halkola later sued Jörn Donner over using a body-double of her in the erotic scenes of the film. Another Kristiina, Hautala, memorably sings 'Kielletyt käskyt' ("Forbidden Commandments"), a now-classic song with lyrics penned by Jukka Virtanen.







Kristiina Halkola and "Jörkka" sharing a tender moment before meeting in court.

Mika Waltari 100 Years

"So it has been and so it always will be."
- The motto from The Egyptian.

Today is the 100th anniversarsy of the birth of Mika Waltari (19 September 1908 - 26 August 1979), a Finnish writer (and national institution) best known for his extensive historical novels that are widely translated into many languages; the biggest favourite among readers continuously being Sinuhe Egyptiläinen ("The Egyptian", 1945), which is also known as less-than-successful Hollywood film version of 1954. Sinuhe was voted in April 2008 as the most loved Finnish book of all time.



Sinuhe Egyptiläinen/The Egyptian with the famous cover illustration by Björn Landström.


Telling something about the canonized position of Mika Waltari in Finland, even the domestic edition of Donald Duck dedicated its latest issue to the author's 100th anniversary.



The extremely prolific Mika Waltari was also a detective novelist, his Inspector Palmu books becoming a series of four films in the 1960s, directed by Matti Kassila and starring Joel Rinne as Palmu.


Komisario Palmu


Leo Jokela: 'Silmät tummat kuin yö', off Komisario Palmun erehdys (1960)





The first three films remain classics of Finnish cinema; less successful, though, was the last installment of the movie series, Vodkaa, Komisario Palmu (1969), the first to be filmed in colour and not based on any of Waltari's original books but only retaining their central characters; having as its tone campy agent comedy making fun of Finnish-Soviet relations and other phenomena of the day. An interesting curiosity, though:


Viktor Klimenko & Inga Sulin, off Vodkaa, Komisario Palmu (1969)


Potent Flash "commercial" from Vodkaa, Komisario Palmu (1969)

MikaWaltari100.net

Mika Waltari @ Kirjasto.sci.fi

Topralli (1966)

Performances from Topralli:


Irwin Goodman: 'Aurinko, tähdet ja kuu' (1966)


Irwin Goodman: 'Kalteritango' (1966)


Eero & Jussi: 'Balladi kanuunasta' (1966)


Carola: 'Mä tahdon pojan' (1966)


Katri Helena: 'Lui' (1966)


Katri Helena: 'Polkkis' (1966)


The Renegades: 'Girls, Girls, Girls' (1966)

Topralli (1966) might be one of the strangest Finnish film turkeys ever made. Filmed entirely without a script on a shoestring budget and being more often than not technically insipid, it's a loose collection of musical performances from some of the day's hottest pop artists in Finland (and as international guest stars, The Renegades from England; totally unknown in their own country but extremely popular here), tied together with clumsy slapstick comedy ("Hot mjölk", anyone?) of a geekish record company executive's (played by the film's director Yrjö Tähtelä) efforts to organise a big musical show extravaganza in order to celebrate the record company's anniversary. Or something like that. Though offering countless embarrassing moments to make a dumbfounded spectator just cringe, there's also something undeniably charming in the overall innocent stupidity and apparent do-it-yourself amateur spirit of the film in these more calculated and cynical times of the music business overkill; many of these performances also remaining as rare visual documents from the pre-music video days.

Especially hilarious is the performance of the up-and-coming starlet Katri-Helena (now an elder stateswoman in Finnish iskelmä scene) doing with the late Irwin Goodman some dance steps to 'Polkkis' in the wintry landscape, apparently emulating the nervous movements of a person with a full bladder anxiously waiting behind the door of an occupied bathroom. Or maybe being just two lunatics awaiting their institutionalisation. Polkkis was obviously meant as a rivalling dance craze to the extremely popular Letkajenkka (or "Letkiss", as it was internationally known). Only in the 60s Finland...

Introduction in English @ Rokumentti

Kaj Chydenius

Kaj Chydenius: 'Sinua sinua rakastan' (1968, off Asfalttilampaat)

And while we are still at the topic, here is another gem from the era, 'Sinua sinua rakastan' ("You, you I love") from 1968, composed and sung by Kaj Chydenius, with lyrics by Aulikki Oksanen; from Mikko Niskanen's film Asfalttilampaat ("Asphalt lambs"), starring Eero Melasniemi and Kirsti Wallasvaara, with whom Niskanen had already worked with for Käpy selän alla.

Kaj Chydenius (b. 1939) was probably the best-known composer for the late-60s/early-to-mid-70s Finnish political song movement, whose timeless sense of melody has guaranteed the evergreen status of his works even to our own apolitical/right-wing politics days.

The lyrics in this one are nearly psychedelic, I think: "Miten huutaa minulle avaruus / Miten kirkuvat tähdet ohimoni läpi / Miten itkevät lapset maailman rannoilla / Ja merien yllä savuavat sydämet" (As a quickie translation: "How space yells to me / how the stars scream through my temples / How the children cry on the shores of the world / And over the seas smoulder the hearts").

Vesa-Matti Loiri rehearsing Lapualaisooppera with Kaj Chydenius (1966)

All Kaj Chydenius search results @ YouTube



Kaj Chydenius in the late 1960s, one of "partaradikaalit" ("bearded radicals") as Finnish leftists were called then


A scene from Asfalttilampaat, with Eero Melasniemi and Kirsti Wallasvaara

Kristiina Halkola and Käpy selän alla (1966)

Kristiina Halkola: 'Laulu rakastamisen vaikeudesta' ("A song about the difficulty of loving"; off Käpyn selän alla, 1966)


Creatures: 'Where Can She Be' (off Käpy selän alla, 1966)

After a typically rainy summer season, everything seems still quiet on Finnish electronic dance music front, so pHinnWeb goes on its nostalgia trip of yesteryear's domestic popular culture. Enjoy, or at least, bear with me.

Käpy selän alla, directed by Mikko Niskanen in 1966 created a sensation in Finland. (The title literally translates as "A pinecone under one's back", though the official English film title for some reason is Skin, Skin, also known as Under Your Skin, probably trying to cash off the boom of "erotic" European art films of the time, though by today's standards eroticism here seems extremely tame.) A simple, slightly comical story about two young couples' camping trip to countryside (climaxing in a drunken sojourn to see the Creatures playing at a forest dancehall) and reflecting the typical problems of baby-boomer generation, the film (largely improvised from the original script of Marja-Leena Mikkola) was a huge success and was widely received as a new beginning for Finnish cinema, forgetting the old conventions of traditional theatrical "Suomi-Filmi" style and representing a new generation of Finnish film-makers, with Niskanen's contemporaries such as Risto Jarva; taking its cues from influences such as French New Wave and international auteurs like Ingmar Bergman. Starring Kristiina Halkola, Kirsti Wallasvaara, Pekka Autiovuori and Eero Melasniemi, who were at the time of the film still fresh-faced and unknown actor students but would subsequently become household names familiar from TV and film.

Mikko Niskanen (1929 - 1990) was a film director and actor, who had studied film-making in the Soviet Union, debuting in 1962 with Pojat ("Boys"), a film both comical and tragic about the relations of young boys, their elders and German soldiers during Finnish Continuation War of the early 40s, starring young Vesa-Matti Loiri in his memorable first role. With his late-60s films Käpy selän alla, Lapualaismorsian and Asfalttilampaat Niskanen took on the urbane themes of young baby-boomer adults, though nowadays it's the naturalistic rural tragedy Kahdeksan surmanluotia ("Eight Deadly Shots") of 1972, which is considered his most lasting masterpiece.



The singing actress Kristiina Halkola (b. 1945), with her beautiful dark looks and memorable pout, would also be seen in many other films of this era, such as Niskanen's Lapualaismorsian and Jörn Donner's Mustaa valkoisella (she would later sue Donner, who had infamously used a body double for her in the film's erotic scenes) and participate in Finnish leftist political song movement (in the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill cabaret song tradition, with such lyricist-vocalists as Aulikki Oksanen, singing groups called with names such as Agit Prop or heavily wailing chanteuses like Kaisa Korhonen and her then-husband Kaj Chydenius, perhaps the movement's best known composer), recording for Love Records an album Täytyy uskaltaa ("One has to dare") in 1971. Halkola's singing performances for the late-60s TV shows in the style of the political Orvokki-Kabaree stirred controversy, with then-provocative songs concerning such subjects as mocking the twenty richest families of Finland or interpreting an old church hymn as a go-go version. Kristiina Halkola also participated in leftist politics as a member of Finnish Communist Party and its later incarnation Demokraattinen Vaihtoehto. Her children with Eero Melasniemi have continued as actors and musicians. Nowadays Kristiina Halkola is considered an icon of the heavily politicized "Taistolaisuus" era of the late 1960s and 1970s. The politics may not have stood the test of time but the best songs created through it well have; like their more capitalist contemporaries, Finnhits iskelmäs, enjoying a huge nostalgia movement in the 21st century Finland.

Mikko Niskanen in Finnish:

Kahdeksan surmanluotia clips @ Yle Elävä Arkisto

Wikipedia

Mikko Niskanen in English:

Skin, Skin @ Siffblog

Eight Deadly Shots @ Siffblog

More video clips of songs by Kristiina Halkola:

'Ei puolikasta' (audio only)

'Jos rakastat' (audio only)

'Kätten työtä' (audio only)

'Laulu 20 perheestä' (1969)

'Laulu siirtotyöläisestä' (audio only)

'Sinun lapsesi'

'Suomalainen tulee toimeen omillaan' (1969, with Vesa-Matti Loiri)

'Tartu hetkeesi' (audio only)

'Virsi 639' (1968, with Liisa-Maija Laaksonen)

Käpy selän alla links:

IMDB

Suomalaisen elokuvan festivaali (in Finnish)

Pajakkakino (in Finnish)

Elonet (in Finnish)



Aulikki Oksanen, Kirsti Wallasvaara and Kristiina Halkola back then

Blues Section: 'Semi-Circle Solitude' (1968)

Blues Section: 'Semi-Circle Solitude' (1968)


Blues Section: 'Cherry Cup-Cake Twist' (1968)


Blues Section: 'Hey Hey Hey' (1967)


Blues Section: 'Call Me On Your Telephone' (1967)

'Semi-Circle Solitude' is probably my all-time favourite track from Blues Section, a late-60s Finnish rhythm & blues/psychedelic band fronted by a great British ex-pat singer-songwriter, Jim Pembroke (later of Wigwam, another band worth checking out and don't let the "progessive rock" tag put you off, because there's some memorable songwriting here, too). The film excerpts for 'Semi-Circle Solitude' and 'Cherry Cup-Cake Twist' are from Jaakko Pakkasvirta's documentary film Eläköön nuoruus ("Viva Youth", 1968). 'Hey Hey Hey' was used in Mikko Niskanen's 1967 film Lapualaismorsian, in a sequence depicting how students in Helsinki celebrate Mayday.

YouTube also has Blues Section's 'Kuka kertoisi minulle?' ("Who would tell me?"; as vocalist Pepe Willberg, formerly of The Jormas), from Timo Bergholm's drama film Punahilkka ("Little Red Riding Hood"), another movie from 1968. Furthermore, there's a clip of 'End of a Poem', from their 1996 comeback gig.

Lyrics @ Mikko Meriläinen's excellent Blues Section/Wigwam site

60s Garage Rock & Psychedelia in Finland @ pHinnWeb

And as bonus, more Jim Pembroke songwriting, 'Simple Human Kindness' from Wigwam's "deep pop" album Nuclear Nightclub (1975); this studio live is from 1976:


Wigwam: 'Simple Human Kindness' (1976, off Pop-Liisa TV show)

Erkki Kurenniemi: Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968)

Erkki Kurenniemi: Electronics in the World of Tomorrow (1968)

More Erkki Kurenniemi search results @ YouTube

Erkki Kurenniemi @ YLE Elävä Arkisto

Erkki Kurenniemi @ pHinnWeb

Markku Peltola (1956-2007)

Markku Peltola 1956-2007

Markku Peltola, the star of Aki Kaurismäki's award-winning The Man Without a Past (2002), has suddenly passed away at his home in Kangasala. Peltola was also involved in the activities of Tampere's Telakka club-restaurant-theatre and played in the band Motelli Skronkle. Markku Peltola's two solo albums Buster Keatonin ratsutilalla (2003) and Buster Keaton tarkistaa idän ja lännen (2006) were released by Ektro Records (of Circle fame).

Finnish Wikipedia

30 Years Since Risto Jarva's Death

Risto Jarva and Antti Peippo during the filming of Ruusujen aika


It's been 30 years since the death in car accident of Risto Jarva, perhaps the most prominent film director in Finland before Aki Kaurismäki.

Risto Jarva (15 July 1934 - 16 December 1977) was one of the Finnish directors (alongside e.g. Maunu Kurkvaara, Erkko Kivikoski and Jaakko Pakkasvirta) who in the early 1960s took their cues from French new wave and modernism, thus breaking the nationalist-rural tradition that had been prevalent in Finland's cinema up to those days.

Such works as Onnenpeli (1965) and Työmiehen päiväkirja (1967) combined urbanist themes and social topics. Ruusujen aika (1969) is one of the rare examples of Finnish science fiction cinema. Bensaa suonissa (1970) and controversial Kun taivas putoaa... (1972) (based on the worst exploits of scandal press magazines such as Hymy and its most notorious writer Veikko Ennala) brought grim satirical overtones to social commentary. Yhden miehen sota (1973), perhaps the bleakest film of Jarva, follows the desperate attempts of a lone entrepreneur and his one-man excavator company.

After that Jarva's films took on a lighter note, though not abandoning social issues, and commercially, popular comedies starring Antti Litja, such as Mies joka ei osannut sanoa ei (1975), Loma (1976) and especially Jäniksen vuosi (1977, from a novel by Arto Paasilinna) were the biggest successes of Jarva's career until the death in taxi accident after the director was returning from a showing of Jäniksen vuosi for the invited guests cut his career short, thus giving a serious blow for Finnish cinema in general.


Rauli Badding Somerjoki: 'Bensaa suonissa' (off Risto Jarva's Bensaa suonissa, 1970)

Risto Jarva @ IMDB

Links in Finnish:

Risto Jarva -seura: a society dedicated to the director

Risto Jarva @ Elävä Arkisto

SEA

Wikipedia

Sähkömetsä: Finnish Experimental Cinema 1933-1998

A newly released book Sähkömetsä - Videotaiteen ja kokeellisen elokuvan historiaa Suomessa 1933-1998 ("Electric Forest - The history of video art and experimental cinema in Finland 1933-1998") -- edited by Kirsi Väkiparta, lavishly illustrated and published by Kuvataiteen keskusarkisto (Central Art Archives of Finnish National Gallery) -- is the first attempt to trace the complete history of Finnish media art in cinema and video. The book features such writers as film director Mika Taanila, researchers Hannu Eerikäinen and Kari Yli-Annala, and Perttu Rastas, who has specialized in video and media art since the mid-80s.

As the starting point of Finnish experimental cinema Mika Taanila has chosen Armas Jokinen's surrealistic short film Vappuhumua of 1933. A major name here must be the visual artist Eino Ruutsalo, who created in 1962-67 his experimental shorts where he painted and wrote directly to film, scratched it and pinned holes to it. Ruutsalo's films -- in their visual narrative not so different from some modern music videos, in fact -- featured music and sounds from such people as jazz composer Henrik Otto Donner and electronic music pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi (who also created some experimental film works of his own). The underground rock culture of the late 60s brought along a new generation of cinematic experimentalists, when such people as Peter Widén of The Sperm group showed his films on the band's gigs, often intending to shock and provoke; Taanila notifies that most of these works have sadly disappeared now.

What remains of Widén's works is a fifteen minutes excerpt of Suomen Talvisota (1970), documenting the band rehearsals of Suomen Talvisota 1939-1940, a controversial rock/performance group featuring such luminaries of Finnish underground as M.A. Numminen. The group members and poets Markku Into and the late Jarkko Laine are seen in the film; also Finland's legendary President Urho Kekkonen is featured here, laying the cornerstone for Helsinki's Finlandia Hall in the cross-cut film excerpts!

Also Timo Aarniala, these days best known as the underground comics artist and for his record sleeves (Underground-Rock by Suomen Talvisota 1939-1940 of 1970 probably being the most famous of them) did his share in the field of experimental cinema: among those works a 1968 short consisting of nothing else but the ever-repeating loop of the 20th Century Fox logo and that familiar fanfare... in music, J.O. Mallander's famous 'Kekkonen' (also 1968) perused exactly the same minimalist idea.

The late 70s punk movement inspired in Finland such experimental film-makers as Pasi "Sleeping" Myllymäki, working in Super-8 format. Myllymäki, born in 1950, was about a decade older than the punk generation but was especially excited with its fanzine boom; also editing his own zine Maanalainen kaitaelokuva ("Underground Super-8 Cinema"). He was to create nearly 50 short films in between the years 1976 and 1985.

Any acclaim for the works of Myllymäki and his collaborator Risto Laakkonen was slow in coming, but finally ten of these films were taken to the collection of Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art, and receiving screenings also around Europe and United States. However, by the mid-1980s Myllymäki's interest in experimental cinema started to wane.

This was also the era when video gradually started to replace film as the favourite medium of experimental artists, being cheaper to use -- and of course, being recyclable. (Perttu Rastas adds, though, that there were some Finnish experiments in video already in the 1960s and 70s.)

Of the later experimental film/video works a mention is deserved to such creators as Taanila himself, Ilppo Pohjola and Eija-Liisa Ahtila (at the moment internationally one of the most acclaimed Finnish visual artists whose Love Is A Treasure (2002) is even featured in the collections of MoMA); also to Sami van Ingen, Seppo Renvall, Veli Granö, Teemu Mäki, Anneli Nygren, Mox Mäkelä, Marikki Hakola, Matias Keskinen, Mikko Maasalo… and the team of Jimi Tenor (better known as a musician, of course) and Jusu Lounela, with their notorious forays into bad taste with such works as Urinator and Dr. Abortenstein.

(As main sources here have been used Harri Römpötti's newspaper article "Kaitafilmiltä videolle, maan alta galleriaan", Helsingin Sanomat 30 April 2007, and the Turun Sanomat interviews of Mika Taanila and Pasi "Sleeping" Myllymäki, linked below.)

Related links in English:

Sähkömetsä screenings @ Avanto Festival 2006

Related links in Finnish:

Kirjan esittely Kuvataiteen Keskusarkiston sivulla

Maanalainen Suomi @ Kinoklubi/YLE Teema

Pasi "Sleeping" Myllymäen haastattelu Turun Sanomissa 26.4. 2007

Mika Taanilan haastattelu Turun Sanomissa 26.4. 2007

Sähkömetsä II @ SEA

Sedis kommentoi

Uusi suomalainen kokeellinen elokuva Filmihullussa

pHinnWeb:

FinnScene: The Early Years

Risto Jarva's Ruusujen aika on DVD

Risto Jarva (1934-1977) was one of Finland's most gifted film directors whose career was sadly cut short by his death in a car accident. Jarva, who was influenced among all by French "New Wave", was one of the first directors to take Finnish cinema out of its formerly provincial status. I saw Jarva's science fiction Ruusujen aika ("A Time of Roses", 1969) in 1990 when it was shown on local TV, and as an old fan of sci-fi cinema, have for years wanted to see it again, even though some current critics have called the film badly dated. So, the film is probably not the best one Risto Jarva ever made, but it nevertheless holds great curiosity value as a rare example of Finnish science fiction cinema. The film has been finally released as a DVD. -- Now, if I only owned a DVD player...