Directory of World Cinema: Finland

Pietari Kääpä, Pietari Kääpä

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781841506661
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Film et vidéo

An important addition to Intellect's popular series, Directory of World Cinema: Finland provides historical and cultural overviews of the country's cinema. Over the course of their contributions to this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines construct a collective argument that complicates the dominant international view of Finnish cinema as small-scale industry dominated by realist art-house films.

The contributors approach the topic from a variety of angles, covering genre, art and commercial films; independent productions; blockbuster cinema; and Finnish cinema's industrial and historical contexts. While paying heed to Finland's cultural specificity, the contributors also explore Finnish cultural industries within the broader context of international political, economic, artistic and industrial developments. Together, they skilfully depict an ever-changing national film culture that plays a dynamic role in the global cinematic landscape. Directory of World Cinema: Finland will therefore expand not only global interest in Finnish cinema but also the parameters within which it is discussed.

INDUSTRIAL SPOTLIGHT

THE ECONOMICS OF FINNISH CINEMA PART 1: 1910–1935

The Finnish cinema business was initially based upon touring companies. Some of these were run by Finnish fairground and circus exhibitors, some by foreign companies such as Frères Lumière and there were also those who had their background in photography or other business ventures. Already in 1901, just five years after the first exhibitions, cinematography was so well-known that the local press concentrated on reviewing the quality of the programme instead of introducing the technique itself.

The first cinema theatre was established in Helsinki in the year 1904, and from 1906 onwards the business grew rapidly. Already in 1907 there were three major companies competing with one another: Apollo, Nordiska Biograf Kompaniet and Maat ja Kansat (‘The Countries and the People’). They all had an identical business plan: functions were based upon a small chain of cinemas in a couple of cities and the business was supported by film import, distribution and rare film-making. This scheme proved to be very fruitful and provided the basics of Finnish cinema business all through the 1910s, although there were constant alterations in the field. Maat ja Kansat bankrupted and Apollo concentrated on photography and operettas, while rivals for Nordiska Biograf Kompaniet emerged, such as Lyyra, Olympia and Maxim, nourishing from the same basics. There were also a couple of film agencies, such as Finlandia Film and Finska Film Agentur, operating without cinemas and focusing solely on importing and distribution. Each of the big companies had one to five cinemas both in Helsinki and in rural cities. Finland was considered too far away from the big centres of film distribution so no films were leased to the Finnish entrepreneurs. Instead they had to be bought, which gave way to extensive distribution requirements. Already in the turn of the 1910s, the import and distribution were practically in the hands of a couple of companies operating from Helsinki.

Film-making was scarce before the Finnish independency in 1917. Most of the production was non-fiction concentrating on topical issues. No exact number for the non-fiction films made during the era of Russian Grand Duchy exist, but they are estimated to amount to somewhere around 300–400. In any case, it is dozens of times larger than the scale of fiction production: only some 23 feature films reached wider theatrical distribution during the same years. The scarce production numbers can be partly blamed upon technical difficulties especially in the post-production phase. Still the major companies and even a couple of private entrepreneurs persisted in trying to succeed in filming, as it was a part of the competition within the companies. Nevertheless, film-making was only a minor issue in the bigger picture of the cinema economics, and none of the established companies were able or even seeking to solely rely on it in their business ventures.

After Finnish independency in 1917 and the Civil War in 1918, the transformation of the film business started with the field being heavily restructured, especially during the years 1918–1922. Most of the earlier companies had been owned by one businessman – or at least the director solely controlled them. Now the scale of business grew rapidly and most of the new CEOs had no such autocratic powers. Old companies were taken over by groups of investors and the companies were assembled together in bigger corporations. As a result, the competition within the business tightened, and the focus was even more in importing, distribution and exhibition, and production was scarcer than before. The biggest operators were the groups owned by Suomen biografi Osakeyhtiö, businessmen Gustaf Molin and Abel Adams and German Universum Film aG (Ufa). These four concerns controlled most of the business as, for example, their share of the import and distribution in 1922 was already more than 75 per cent, and two years later it rose to a peak of 95 per cent.

The large companies in Finland were not interested in film production as they saw better business possibilities in the cinemas and distributions and, especially from 1922 onwards, ceased all film-making. This made way for new entrepreneurs to enter the field and establish the first companies focusing solely on film-making. In a period of just a couple of months two competing companies were established because in the newly independent state film production was seen as powerful tool in both nation-building and advertising Finland abroad. The task of the companies was to create a unique form of Finnish film art and to capture the essence of Finnish culture, literature and art. Economic concerns were also important, as domestic production was seen as a way to keep the profits in Finland – in a mercantilist way of thinking cinema was seen as harmful to state economics because large film importation meant that huge amounts of the income went to foreign film companies. Regardless, the potential of domestic production was seen as very modest, almost nonexistent – because there were no traditions of film-making companies and production in its entirety had been minimal for years, there was no base to build upon.

The task of newly established film companies was not easy, and only one of them, Suomi-Filmi, was able to overcome the initial difficulties. An important financial remedy for the first years was the company’s secondary field of business – theatre set and propmaking – which provided space for Suomi-Filmi to develop its feature film production capabilities. The quality (and popularity) of feature films grew, the production became stable and the importance of set-making diminished. On the financial side, however, the company faced new difficulties. As it had no theatres, it had to rely on the big cinema companies to distribute its films, resulting in smaller profits. Already after a couple of years of film production, the problem was evident: distribution and exhibition played a crucial role in the economics of film-making.

Suomi-Filmi started to plan on establishing a cinema in Helsinki around 1924, but the scheme proved to be too optimistic when compared with the company’s economic status and the heavy competition in the field. Also, Suomi-Filmi arranged to take the company’s features to the countryside, which irritated Suomen Biografi Osakeyhtiö with whom Suomi-Filmi had made most of its distribution deals. The next couple of years were very problematic for Suomi-Filmi, as there were constant disputes about the distribution and exhibition contracts – as a counteraction to the strict demands of Suomen biografi Osakeyhtiö, some of the new features were given to Abel Adams.

1926 was a time of large-scale reforms in film business. The German Ufa withdrew from Finland, not because of any major setbacks, but because of the more general reformation of the company’s functions abroad. Gustaf Molin bought all the possessions of Ufa, which meant that his business group grew considerably and he was able to increase his share to more than 40 per cent of the Finnish film distribution. With his assistance a new film company, Komedia-Filmi, was established, whose leaders had earlier worked in Suomi-Filmi but had resigned or were forced out because of disputes with the CEO Erkki Karu. In the spring of 1926, Molin also sought to buy Suomen Biografi Osakeyhtiö, whose investors were planning to give up the business, but instead Suomi-Filmi won the deal. The venture shows how essential exhibition and distribution was for film production as Suomi-Filmi had built up its production functions for more than six years but still needed the distribution companies to support the production. After some years apart, it had become clear that film producers needed distributors/exhibitors and vice versa.

The business deals of 1926 were the origin of the so-called ‘Trust War’ as both Gustaf Molin and Suomi-Filmi strengthened their status, resulting in a public rift. Most of the smear and slander appeared in film journals Elokuva (pro-Suomi-Filmi and -Abel Adams) and Filmiaitta (pro-Molin), but it spread to the independent press as well. The rift was characterized by heavy nationalistic tendencies emanating from the so-called ‘languagebattle’. As a legacy of common history with Sweden, Finland is a bilingual country, and in the 1920s disputes about the status of the languages were intense – Abel Adams and Erkki Karu, the CEO of Suomi-Filmi, were Finnish speakers and Gustaf Molin was Swedish.

In the smear campaign of the pro-Finnish, Gustaf Molin was pictured as an evil outsider, a foreign investor collaborating with the German and American big corporations. The pro-Molin commentators in return noted that he and Komedia-Filmi were opening up the Finnish film and cinema business, seeking to lift the production to an international level and importing the best international films to Finland. The pro-Finnish commentators, or Suomi-Filmi and Abel Adams, were not able to push Molin out of the business or even substantially harm his ventures. The rift dried out around 1928 or 1929, as both sides again concentrated on business instead of mocking the opponent. Instead, Komedia-Filmi folded as the audience did not appreciate its ‘international film style’, which was a substantial victory for Suomi-Filmi and to the national tendencies of its film production.

The failure of Komedia-Filmi was the biggest economic impact of the Trust War, as cinema companies continued their business as usual. Larger concerns arose a couple of years later when Hollywood production companies such MGM, Fox and Paramount decided to cut off the local distributors and establish their own business for import and distribution. The shares of all the large Finnish cinema companies were cut as most of the Hollywood production no longer went through their hands. The Great Depression and the coming of sound hit Finnish film production hard in the turn of the 1930s. At the same time, Suomi-Filmi fell into poor investments which strained the company’s fortunes even more. The first Finnish sound films were made in 1931, and they proved to be technically challenging and so expensive that in 1932 all feature film production paused for almost half a year. The whole industry was stumbling, and by 1933 everybody expected Suomi-Filmi to fall into bankruptcy.

Suomi-Filmi survived the close call due to the support of Kansallis-Osake-Pankki, one of the biggest banks in Finland (with national tendencies) and because of a coup within the shareholders of which many had connections to the bank. CEO Erkki Karu was forced to resign and new directors were recruited to reform the company. The most important of them was Risto Orko, who started as a production manager but eventually became the CEO and the biggest shareholder. Instead, Karu established a new company Suomen Filmiteollisuus (‘Finland’s Film Industry’). The name consciously imitated the names of both Suomi-Filmi and Svenska Filmindustri, the biggest Swedish film production company.

It took until 1935 for both Suomi-Filmi and Suomen Filmiteollisuus to survive the crisis and establish their new production system. By that time, it was also clear that there would be two major production companies instead of just one. Around the same time, Erkki Karu died suddenly and Suomen Filmiteollisuus got a new leader from Toivo Särkkä. Both companies were, from then onwards, personified by their leaders – Risto Orko and Toivo Särkkä – who used very different business tactics: Suomi-Filmi, which had bought the biggest cinema chain in Finland in 1926, was an ‘all-inclusive’ cinema house as it produced, imported, distributed and exhibited films; Suomen Filmiteollisuus, instead, focused on production and distribution of in-house films. Differences can be seen in their themes as well: Suomen Filmiteollisuus is seen as a traditional and conservative producer of rural and national stories, whereas Suomi-Filmi is defined as modern, more artistic and focusing on depicting urban life. Both of these definitions are of course generalizations as both companies made all kinds of films, but these tendencies dominated their production.

Jade Warrior, Blind Spot Pictures Oy.

SCORING CINEMA

The art of the film score in Finland has been a severely neglected area of study and popular interest. During the first silent decades of the twentieth century, music was rarely composed for films as they relied predominantly on pre-existing tunes. As film production became more established and industrialized, composers who specialized in films emerged on the scene, of whom Martti Similä and Harry Bergström were perhaps the most prolific. The style of music during the years of the studio era followed the template of Hollywood-influenced scoring. The scores accentuated on-screen actions and favoured melodic profusity over more abstract ideas. The 1950s saw composers such as Osmo Lindeman and especially Einar Eglund contribute a more ‘respectable’ style to cinema, especially as they infused their scores with modernist idioms from the concert hall. Englund’s score for Valkoinen peura/The White Reindeer (Blomberg, 1952) is a landmark work for this rare Finnish horror film, expanding the shocking turns of the narrative with music suiting the stunning landscapes. The use of leitmotif techniques and expansive scoring in many of the films action scenes is especially noteworthy and resulted in a much-deserved Jussi Award for the score.

Englund was a neoclassical concert composer first and foremost, and other composers from ‘serious music’ have devoted their talents to cinema. Jazz pianist and classical composer Jukka Linkola provided large scale orchestral work for his Jussi-winning fantasy music to Lumikuningatar/The Snow Queen (Hartzell, 1986) and Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus/The Wonder and Misery of Human Life (Kassila, 1988). Linkola’s neoclassical/ romanticist concert hall and jazz idioms are adapted to the demands of the films for which they were intended. This fusion of approaches allows the scores to resemble the normative standards established by Hollywood whilst sounding simultaneously entirely original. Linkola has focused mostly on his concert works, but other composers have continued to experiment with combining traditional film scoring techniques with contemporary pop music idioms. The most well-known of these is Anssi Tikanmäki who has provided inventive scores for the films of the Kaurismäki brothers. A notable and oft-commented example is the opening of Mika Kaurismäki’s Arvottomat/The Worthless (1982), which was one of the first examples of the 1980s New Wave in Finnish cinema. As a part of the new generation emerging in the 1980s, the Kaurismäkis’ films rebelled against established conventions of Finnish film culture. Tikanmäki’s music is an example of how the films construct this subversiveness as it adapts the canonical ‘Finlandia’ composed by Jean Sibelius and combines it with a rock band, underscoring our introduction to Helsinki. As we fly across the harbours and enter the cityscape, the aural and visual signs connote alternative visions of nationhood. Tikanmäki has provided music for a range of Kaurismäki productions from the melancholic flow of Klaani: Tarina Sammakoitten suvusta /The Clan –Tale of the Frogs (1984) and a combination of classical, folk-inspired melodies and more contemporary idioms for Juha (1999), Aki Kaurismäki’s experimental ‘silent’ film which updates Juhani Aho’s novel to the late 1990s in an idiosyncratically timeless world filled with elements from the past and the present.

Other Finnish composers have been more traditional in their approach to scoring both dramas and historical epics. Perhaps the most successful of contemporary Finnish composers, Tuomas Kantelinen is renowned for his use of long-lined melodies and string adagios to convey emotion and capture the thematic soul of films by Olli Saarela, such as Rukajärven tie/Ambush (1999) and Suden vuosi/The Year of the Wolf (2007). Both scores also benefit from well-considered minimalist techniques. Kantelinen has increasingly directed his career abroad, receiving a commission from Miramax for the thriller Mindhunters (Harlin, 2004). He also provided the score for the academy award-nominated historical epic Mongol (Bodrov, 2007) produced in collaboration between Russia, Germany, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, which received a CD release on the Varese Sarabande label. These are all considerable feats for Finnish multimedia composers and Kantelinen occupies a prime position even among the ‘A-list’ composers for Nordic cinema, providing, for example, a large-scale score for Peter Flinth’s epic Arn series (2007–08). Despite his increasing international prestige, Kantelinen continues to keep close ties with Finnish film-makers, scoring the animated feature Röllin sydän/Quest for a Heart (Lehtosaari, 2007) amongst others.

While the soundscapes of Finnish films are still largely dominated by pop music ‘needle drops’, original orchestral scoring is increasingly prevalent. Pop musicians and producers such as Kerkko Koskinen and Leri Leskinen have expanded their repertoire into orchestral music with inspired efforts for Toinen jalka haudasta/One Foot Under (Vuoksenmaa, 2009) and Joulutarina/Christmas Story (Wuolijoki, 2007), respectively. Samuli Kosmonen and Kimmo Pohjonen composed the score for the Finnish-Chinese coproduction Jadesoturi/Jade Warrior (Annila, 2006), which combines their unique talents as percussionist and accordionist respectively, and uses many folk sounds and more contemporary idioms in capturing the unique flavour of this film, sounding unlike other fantasy scores yet remaining within its aesthetic realm. The music is a good example of an innovative approach to scoring familiar cinematic tropes, and it settles neither for genre nor conventional musical direction dictated by the Hollywood paradigm.

Towards the end of the 2000s, orchestral scores are once again becoming the norm as many of the larger films of 2008–10 feature full-blown scores presumably to increase the ‘technical’ values of the films. Simultaneously, these compositions are remarkably free of the temp-tracking that is decreasing the value of the art form in other parts of the world, with new compositions sounding undeniably similar to recent hit scores. Yet, film music as a part of domestic film culture remains severely undera...