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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2011
Journal of Scandinavian Cinema - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2011
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2011
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Modernity and the moving image: Halldór Laxness and the writing of ‘The American Film in 1928’
More LessThe article discusses Icelandic author and Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness’s (1902–98) essay ‘Kvikmyndin ameríska 1928’/‘The American Film in 1928’, which was written during Laxness’s stay in Hollywood in the late 1920s. The development of the essay from a 1927 draft to its 1929 publication in the essay collection Alþy´ðubókin/‘The Commoner’s Book’ is traced, and the contours of its extensive ideological critique are examined. The article contextualizes Laxness’s emphasis on the economic realities of film production and discusses his interest in cinema in conjunction with his allegiance to societal modernization and his engagement with modernism in the arts. Laxness’s analysis of various films and filmmakers is addressed in relation to what for him constituted the proper deployment of the medium. Finally, Laxness’s subsequent career as it relates to his continuing engagement with cinema is briefly addressed.
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The American Film in 1928
More LessLaxness’s essay, ‘Kvikmyndin ameríska 1928’/‘The American Film in 1928’, was originally published in 1929 and offers a critical analysis of Hollywood and the early studio system. The author argues that the movie industry, due in part to the economic realities of film production and in part to the social dominance of capitalism in the United States, functions largely as an ideological apparatus on behalf of the corporations who own the studios, and as such promotes and protects the wider social interest of the moneyed class. The essay then seeks to identify the manner in which films communicate ideological ‘messages’ through the manipulation of narrative structures and the mise-en-scène, and particularly how ideological ‘effects’ are tailored to the working class. The essay then offers an extensive analysis of the work of Cecil B. DeMille, who is found to be exemplary of the commercialized ‘Hollywood spirit’, followed by a discussion of Charles Chaplin, practically the sole exception to the conservative political agenda of mainstream Hollywood. The essay commences with a short preface where the ramifications of Hollywood’s vast cultural reach are reflected upon.
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Art is born on the border of taboo: Vilgot Sjöman in Hollywood
More LessVilgot Sjöman’s book I Hollywood/In Hollywood (1961) gives a personal account of the American system of film production from the perspective of a prospective film director. It can be argued that the analysis of the Production Code sums up Sjöman’s position on art, later to be developed in his films.
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‘This is a dirty movie’ – Taxi Driver and ‘Swedish sin’
More LessThis article examines a well-known sequence in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver in which the main character Travis Bickle takes his date Betsy to the movies and convinces her to see a Swedish sex education film. The article analyses the representation of Swedish cinema and Swedish sexuality in Taxi Driver, but also discusses the short sequence from a Swedish perspective, revealing a contemporary popular Swedish misconception about it. For this purpose, the sequence as well as the subsequent Swedish interpretation of it are contextualized and considered in relation to the widespread notion of ‘Swedish sin’.
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The ‘Greatest Finn’ meets the ‘Gay Marshal’: Foucault’s cycle, national narratives and The Butterfly of the Urals
More LessThe article examines the case of the ‘Gay Marshal’, the late C.G.E. Mannerheim, president of Finland, supreme commander of Finnish military forces during World War II, and often voted the ‘Greatest Finn’ in opinion polls. In the puppet-animation film The Butterfly of the Urals (Katariina Lillqvist, 2008) Mannerheim wears a purple corset and enjoys a relationship with his male servant. The film incited a media war. The article shows how the film’s reception involves Foucault’s cycle, a concept adapted from Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (1984 [1976]): sexuality fascinates and attracts large audiences, but its visibility is viable only under certain conditions, rules and restrictions. Focusing on sexuality also turns out to be a means of closeting the painful, wilfully forgotten Civil War (1918) history, which has divided Finland and remained a problematic topic in Finland’s national narratives.
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Guarding the heritage: radio and television culture preservation in Finland
More LessThe National Audiovisual Archive of Finland aims to preserve Finnish film, radio and television culture. Radio and television archiving began in 2008. A programme stream of primary Finnish TV channels and radio stations is recorded, and original-quality programmes are deposited for research purposes. RITVA and ELONET databases help users access materials.
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Dealing with crime: cyclic changes in Norwegian crime films
More LessThe 1980s not only saw an increase in the number of crime films in Norway, the criminal investigator also made his comeback after being more or less absent throughout the post-war period. Just as with the dominant trend internationally, the criminal investigator was an outsider, a man of yesteryear that the changing times had left behind. As society was in transition, with the destabilization of family structure, an increase in immigration from the south and the rise of the yuppie culture and its aftermath, criminal cases also changed. In short, the criminal investigator seemed unfit to meet the demands of a new age. Twenty years later, the criminal investigator appears to be more at ease with himself, although he is still very much an outsider, and the crimes investigated have well-known causes. As a result, Norwegian crime films no longer seem to impart any implicit politically charged critique.
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The Film Museum in Kristianstad: ‘The cradle of Swedish film’
More LessThe Film Museum in Kristianstad in southern Sweden is located on the top floor of the building that housed the headquarters of Svenska Biografteatern, the leading Swedish production company of its time, from 1909 to 1917. It includes the glass-roofed studio where the company’s first films were shot.
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