The forefront of achievement during the silent the late forefront of cinematic achievement during the silent era. In the late 1910s and the early 1920s, the best films of Victor Sjöström, Mauritz Stiller and Carl Theodor Dreyer achieved an almost unequalled delicacy and naturalism. However, with the coming of sound and the growing dominance of Hollywood, the sparsely populated Nordic countries became linguistically and culturally isolated.
By the late 1940s, though, Scandinavia-especially Sweden-was again making creative films; film historian Peter Cowie has claimed: ‘Probably no other nation of the comparative population has matched the artistic success of Sweden in the cinema’. Central to that success was the photogenic beauty of its rural and urban landscapes and the contrast between its austere Lutheran traditions and its 20th-century evolution into a pacific, secular social democracy.
These concerns found expression during the 1950s in the work of Ingmar Bergman. His finest early films, ‘Sommarlek’ and ‘Sommaren med Monika’, were melancholy romances, set against the backdrop of the Stockholm archipelago, the wild and temporary seasonal beauty of which reflected the transience of love. Such films were in a traditional Swedish vein, also typified by ‘Hon Dansade en sommar’ by Arne Mattsson. another tragic love story set against a rural backdrop. Bergman then moved towards allegory and existentialism in ‘Det sjunde inseglet’. Despite the medieval setting and fantasy premise, it addressed the very 20th-century dilemma of the man without faith seeking meaning in life. In ‘Jungfrukällan’, Bergman revisited medieval times, exploring Scandinavia’s dual heritage of paganism and Christianity. ‘Smultronstället’ was a gentler, more realistic account of an old man taking stock of his life, prefiguring the more psychological emphasis of Bergman’s 1960s work.
Alf Sjöberg has been unjustly overshadowed by the two outstanding Swedish artists with whom he was associated. His best-known film abroad, ‘Hets’, was scripted by Bergman, who has taken the credit for its bleak psychological undercurrents, although the claustrophobic atmosphere is surely down to its director. During the 1950s, Sjöberg adapted works by Sweden’s greatest playwright, August Strindberg, realizing a memorable version of ‘Fröken Julie’ and an innovative, rather playful historical film in ‘Karin Månsdotter’, based on Strindberg’s ‘Erik XIV’. Little known outside Sweden, Hasse Ekman deserves greater fame for ‘Flicka och hyacinter’, a haunting story about an investigation into a girl’s suicide. The film showed the unusual sexual frankness of post-war Swedish cinema, while subtly probing the compromises made by Sweden to remain neutral during World War II. Also notable was the work of Arne Sucksdorff who creatively melded fiction and documentary.
Denmark’s greatest director, Carl Theodor Dreyer, made only one film in the 1950s. ‘Ordet’ was, however, a masterpiece, an austere yet humane parable whose miraculous elements were beautifully undercut by the subtle realism of the performances and settings. The decade also saw the emergence of Gabriel Axel, later to achieve international fame with ‘Babettes gæstebud’. His feature debut, ‘Altid Ballade’, was a charming realist account of a working-class family.
Norway’s most talented filmmaker was Arne Skouen, whose ‘Ni liv’ won international acclaim and an Oscar nomination. It is a tense and skilfully crafted account of the wartime flight of a Resistance fighter to neutral Sweden. Debuting with the chilling ‘Døden er et kjærtegn’, Norway’s first female director, Edith Carlmar, sustained a career through the 1950s. Her final film, the rites of passage story ‘Ung flukt’, marked the first appearance of actress Liv Ullmann.
Notable Finnish works included ‘Valkoinen peura’ , a Lapp folk tale adapted for cinema by Erik Blomberg, which made impressive use of the Nordic scenery, and the war film ‘Tuntematon sotilas’ by Edvin Laine, which remains the highest-grossing Finnish film.
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