About my
relationship with
the film medium
Section 10
On this day, August
8, 1945, according to the advertisements in the National Gazette, there were
plenty of films to choose from:
The
cinema repertoire in Copenhagen cinemas on Wednesday 8 August 1945:
Aladdin: Kl.
6.50. Panik i Familien (Danish, 1945) Farce with Ib
Schønberg and Chr. Arhoff -
Direction: Lau Lauritzen and Alice O’Fredericks -
Sounding Tones with Elvi Henriksen, Kirsten Thrane Petersen, Emil Christoffersen,
Ulrik Sjøberg, Wandy Tworek - Ferd’nand on Bear Hunt Cartoon by Mik
(Danish, 1945)
Alexandra: Kl. 2,
-4.15-6.30. The movie begins exactly. Week 2! Forbidden for Children The
American blockbuster film Julien Duvivier's Manhattan
(American, 1942) with the 5 Stars
Allé-Teatret: Kl.
5.10 and 7.15. Noel Coward The Sea is Our Destiny (Eng., 1942)
Amager Bio: Kl. 5
and 6.45. Week 2 Else Marie - Hans Kurt Man loves only once (Danish, 1945)
Atlantic: Kl.
6.45. Prohibited for Children Daughters of U.S.A. (So proudly we
hail) (amrk., 1943) Claudette Colbert - Paulette
Goddard
Bella Bio: Kl.
6.45 pr. The Great Operette Success You Love Only
Once (Danish, 1945) Else Marie - Hans Kurt
Bellevue: Kl.
19.10. Next. Day! Robert Donat Farewell Mr. Chips (amrk., 1939) S.H.A.E.F.-Ugerevy
Bergthora: Kl.
6.50. Rita Hayworth - Fred Astaire in Say It With Orchids (amrk.,
1942)
Bio - Lyngby: Kl.
19.10. The new English film One of Our Machines is Missing (Eng., 1945?) Extra
performance Friday and Saturday At. 17
Bispebjerg Bio: Kl.
19.00 Jeanette Mac Donald in The Firefly (amrk. 1937)
K. 18.15: Short Film Program. Sm. Prices
Boulevard Teatret: Kl. 6.45 Only Angels Have Wings (Amrk., 1938) Cary Grant - Jean Arthur
Bristol: Kl.
1-2,50-4-7. Week 4! "It Must Be You" (Sun Valley Serenade) (Amrk., 1941) Sonja Henie and John Payne
Carlton: Kl.
2.3.50-6.50. Week 14! The English Laughter-Farce It is in the Air (Eng. 1938)
Thurs. Kl. 12.30 and 1.10 Matinee: The Freedom Struggle & The Victory in
Paris
Casino: Kl.
6.45. Else Marie - Hans Kurt in Man loves only once (Danish, 1945)
Colosseum: Kl.
6.45. Panik i Familien (Danish, 1945) Farce with Ib
Schønberg and Chr. Arhoff -
Direction: Lau Lauritzen and Alice O’Fredericks.
Sounding Tones with Elvi Henriksen, Kirsten Thrane Petersen, Emil Christoffersen,
Ulrik Sjøberg, Wandy Tworek - Ferd’nand on Bear Hunt Cartoon by Mik
(Danish 1945)
Dagmar: Kl.
2-3-4.10-5.15. Forbidden for Children Premiere Why was there a war? (amrk. 1943ff) Edited by Frank Capra - The film that shows
how World History's greatest crime was prepared
D.S.B .: Every
full Time Kl. 13 - 19. Norwegian Film Review - Weekly Journal - American Military
Orchestra - Swedish Gymnastics - King Gustaf visits Copenhagen - Lambeth Walk -
Ms. Street boy
Enghave Bio: Kl.
6.45. Mickey Rooney - Judy Garland Vi Charmører (amrk. 1939)
Fasan Bio: Kl. 6.30.
Week 2! With Swedish Texts Leslie Howard in Pimpernel Smith (Eng. 1941)
Gentofte Kino: Kl.
5.15 and 7.15. Note the new Playtime Leslie Howard in Pimpernel Smith (Eng.
1941)
Grand: Kl.
1.30-3.20-5.10-7. Forb. f. Children The film Sabotage Live Dangerously! (not
identified)
Grøndals: Note!
Kl. 6.15 and 7.50. Forb. f. Children Note Play times Marchen
v Berlin (not identified)
Cinema - Lyngby: Kl. 7.30
pr. Leslie Howard in Pimpernel Smith (Eng. 1941) All Sold out Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday At. 7.30 Extra performance Friday and Saturday At. 5,
Lyngbyvejens Kino: Kl.
6.45 The crime film Dead Man falls in love (not identified)
Merry: NOTE!
The times Kl. 3.30 News: Short film NOTE! Kl. 4.30 and 6.45. Forb. f. Children
The Giant-Sensational Movie Air Force (Amrk. 1943)
Metropol: Kl.
2-4.15-6.30. Week 4! It Must Not Be Morning (amrk.,
1941) Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard
Nora: Kl. 6.45
Else Marie - Hans Kurt Man loves only Once (Danish, 1945)
Nørrebro Cinema: Kl. 6.45
Claudette Colbert in Remember the Day (amrk., 1942)
Nørreport Bio:
Kl. 14.10-16, 10-18.40. Ib Schønberg - Chr. Arhoff in Panik i Familien
(Danish, 1945) Ferd’nand on Bear Hunt - Sounding
Tones
Palads: Kl.
2.30 Kl. 4.30 Kl. 6.45. Week 4! Prohibited
for Children David Niven in The Way Forward (probably Eng., 1944)
Palladium: Kl.
2.30 Kl. 4.30 Kl. 6.45. The Palladium Pleasure While The Lawyer Sleeps (Danish,
1945)
Park: Kl.
18.45. Else Marie - Hans Kurt in The Operetta Success You Love Only Once
(Danish, 1945)
Platan: Kl. 6,
15 and 7. Ginger Rogers in There is a Wedding in the Air (amrk.
1941)
Regina: Kl.
6.45 Double Program Jack Holt in Death in the Air (amrk.
Year unknown) Charles Starrett in I Seksløberens Skygge (amrk. Year unknown)
Rialto: Kl.
4.15 and 6.30. Week 2! Penultimate day! Humphrey Bogart in Convoy of the North
Atlantic (amrk. 1943)
Roxy: Kl.
6.45 pr. Panik i Familien (Danish, 1945) Farce with Ib
Schønberg and Chr. Arhoff
Direction: Lau Lauritzen and Alice O’Fredericks -
Sounding Tones with Elvi Henriksen, Kirsten Thrane Petersen, Emil Christoffersen,
Ulrik Sjøberg, Wandy Tworek - Ferd’nand on Bear Hunt Cartoon by Mik
(Danish 1945)
Ry-Kino: Kl.
6.45. Forb. f. Children Noel Coward's Masterpiece The Sea is Our Destiny (Eng.,
1942)
Saga Teatret: Kl.
2.00-4.15-6.30. Next. Day! Forb. f. Children
Gary Cooper in "Sergeant York" (amrk. 1941)
Fors. To the Danish premiere Friday: The
English-Danish Big Movie: We are sailing at Dawn (English-Danish. 1945?)
Scala-Bio:
2.15-3.30-4.45.6, 15-7.30. Week 2! Prohibited f. Children Hitler's Lightning
War (amrk. 1943??) The film that shows Hitler's
brutal attacks on Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium 'Kl. 7.30:
Everything Sold Out!
Skovshoved: Kl.
7.15 Bodil Kjer and Ebbe Rode in Two Who Love Each Other (Danish, 1944)
Strand Teatret: Kl. 7.10 Noel Coward's Masterpiece The Sea
is Our Destiny (1942)
Søborg: Kl.
19.10 all week - The fleet manages (not identified)
Toftegaards: Kl.
6.45 Else Marie - Hans Kurt in Man loves only once (Danish, 1945)
Triangle: Kl. 6.45.
Panik i Familien
(Danish, 1945) Farce with Ib Schønberg
and Chr. Arhoff Direction: Lau Lauritzen and Alice O’Fredericks - Sounding Tones with Elvi
Henriksen, Kirsten Thrane Petersen, Emil Christoffersen, Ulrik Sjøberg, Wandy Tworek - Ferd’nand on Bear Hunt
Cartoon by Mik (Danish 1945)
Valby: Kl.
6.45 Mickey Rooney - Judy Garland Vi Charmører (amrk.
1939)
Vanløse: Kl.
6.45. Penultimate day! My Sister Eileen (born 1943) Rosalind Russell - Brian Aherne
Vesterbro Theater: Kl. 7. Prohibited
b. Children Attack on Panama (amrk. 1942) with
Humphrey Bogart
Windsor: Kl. 7.
Prohibited for Children The Frank Capra film The Battle of Russia (amrk. 1943??)
In connection with
the above cinema repertoire, I actually only have comments on two films, namely
the short Danish cartoon Ferd'nand on Bear Hunt,
which the cartoonist Dahl Mikkelsen (Mik) produced
for ASA Film during 1945. The film and its creator are especially mentioned on
www.tegnefilmhistorie.dk in the section DANSK TEGNEFILM 1930-1942.
The second film -
or rather: film series - to which I would like to make a few remarks here is
Frank Capra's impressive documentary series on World War II. The Italian-born
Frank Capra (1897-1991) began in the American film industry as early as 1921,
where he worked on editing film weekly shows, called Screen Snapshots. He later
became assistant director and gag-man for farce film producer Hal Roach on his
hugely popular series "The Kids". In addition, in 1926 he became the
director of a series of short film farces with the comedian Harry Langdon.
In the period
1928-39, Capra was a leading director on film comedies and feature films at the
film company Columbia. It was especially these feature films that made him
world famous in the 1930s, with titles such as It Happened One Night (1934), A
Gentleman Comes to Town (1936), and the Somewhat More Serious Lost Horizons
(1937), Mr. Smith Comes to Washington (1939), We Need Each Other (1941),
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It's Wonderful to Live
(1947). It must be noted that Capra's subsequent feature films from the
1940s-50s did not have quite the same artistic quality and intensity as his
films from the 1930s.
In 1941, Capra -
like so many other filmmakers - was drafted into the US Army. But instead of becoming
a real soldier, he joined the Army Film Department, for which he produced war
documentaries for the US government in the following years of the war. His main
task was to direct the organization and production of the documentary series
Why We Fight. The series includes a total of 7 films, of which Danish cinemas
after the liberation showed the following: Prelude to War (Why was there a
war?), Nazi Strike (The Nazis go on the attack), Divide and Conquer (Battle of
England), Battle of Russia Russia), Tunisian Victory (Liberation of Africa).
Incidentally, the series was released on video many years later.
I therefore most
often spent the weekends drawing during the day, while Saturday evenings and
Sunday afternoons were usually reserved for the time spent with my two friends,
Jørgen and Jørn. It
happened regularly that we went to the cinema together for the afternoon show
at 4 pm, but otherwise we liked to stand down on the street in front of Jørn's entrance and chat about loose and tight. But when we
went to the cinema, it was like in one of the cinemas that were roughly within
the same, not too large radius from Jægersborggade / Kronborggade. In the Colosseum, which we called the
Colosseum, from August 6 you could see the Danish farce "Panik i Familien",
directed by the partner couple Alice O'Fredericks and
Lau jun., And which had a number of well-known actors in the lead roles, with Ib Schønberg and Chr. Arhoff at the helm. But what was of particular interest to
me was the trailer that was shown along with the main film. It was Dahl
Mikkelsen's alias Mik's second Ferd'nand
cartoon, "Ferd'nand on bear hunting".
Unfortunately, it was also his last short cartoon in this country, as the
problem with cartoons in Denmark, especially at that time, was the financing,
and single short cartoons could not get game revenue. The following year, Mik chose to emigrate to the United States, more precisely
to California, where he applied to Disney, but when he was not satisfied with
the salary and working conditions offered, he created a livelihood by
continuing and concentrating on draw his internationally famous cartoon "Ferd'nand". Later, however, he also made a few
cartoons with Ferd’nand for American TV. But his real
livelihood was raising chickens, chickens, which the Americans considered their
favorite food, in slaughtered and grilled form of course.
As previously and
several times mentioned, the American feature films had returned to the Danish
cinemas already a few days after the end of the occupation, more precisely on
May 6, 1945. And it is incredibly fast, you got used to it again as a matter of
course, to go in the cinema and watch an American or English film. One of the
films that Jørgen, Jørn and
I saw in the Odeon in August 1945 was "Gunga Din"
(1939), based on a story by Rudyard Kipling, and whose dramatic action takes
place in India. Starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen
and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The film was banned for children, but it was no
longer a problem for us three youngsters, at least not for Jørn
and me, who were both 16 years old. Jørgen, on the
other hand, was still 15 years old, but could easily go for being a
16-year-old, and therefore we had no trouble getting in. By the way, there was
never any of the cinema staff in the mentioned cinemas who asked us about our
age.
As also mentioned
earlier, the first American film I myself got to see after the liberation was
the highly dramatic and shocking war film "Air Force", which I saw in
Alexandra on May 6, 1945, and at that time I was not yet 16 years old year. But
among the many other American films that the three of us saw in the autumn and
winter season of 1945, either together or separately, were e.g. "Sergeant
York" with Gary Cooper, which appeared in Nora Bio in September,
"Such is Life" with Mickey Rooney in Roxy. In the second week of
September, the Colossus showed "A Day in the Circus," featuring the
famous and utterly crazy Marx Brothers. But of course there were several other
American films that we saw, either in the cinemas mentioned above or in cinemas
like Fasan, Regina and Bispebjerg
Bio, where we came less often. Regina was best known for her double shows,
which mostly consisted of a crime film and a Western, for the latter in some
cases starring our great hero, John Wayne. During the 1930s, he had recorded so
many cowboy movies that there was plenty to take away for the cinemas that
played matinee movies on Saturday and Sunday. But these movies were now
starting to seem boring and indifferent to me, regardless of whether I thought
Wayne was an excellent actor.
From then on, it
was a completely different type of film that interested and captivated me. But
unfortunately it was movies that my two buddies found boring and uninteresting.
That is why I usually went in alone and watched these movies. One of the films
I saw during this period, which made a big and indelible impression on me, was
the realistic English feature film In Which We Serve (1942; "The sea is
our destiny"), directed by Noel Coward, who also starred one of the film's
lead roles.
We have
chronologically now reached the month of September 1945, and can here, among
other things. note that the connection with the great foreign country began to
be restored, as on September 4 the first scheduled service departed after the
war from Copenhagen to London.
Contrary to what
had been the case all the previous years since my family and I had come to
Copenhagen on April 1, 1939, I was not in to see "Metropol's Christmas
Show" at Christmas time 1945. The program otherwise consisted of only two
reruns , and in return for four short new Disney cartoons that I, for the same
reason, had not previously had the opportunity to see. But this year I had
become so tired of the cartoon genre that a break was needed.
The two remake
cartoons on the 1945 program were The Three Little Pigs (1933; "The Three
Little Pigs") and The Brave Little Taylor (1938; "The Brave
Tailor"). The four new Disney cartoons had all been made in 1942, and thus
at a time when America had joined the war, and it was the films largely
influenced by what also appears in the titles: The Vanishing Private (1942;
”The Invisible Soldier") starring Donald Duck, Sky Trooper (1942;
"Donald Duck as a Paratrooper"), and The Army Mascot (1942;
"Division Mascot") starring Pluto, as well as Private Pluto (1942;
"Pluto in the Shirt") ).
Unfortunately, I
have not been able to find out whether a premiere or a premiere of one of
Disney's long cartoons took place on Christmas Day 1945, but as far as I can see,
that is not the case. We have to wait until the spring of 1949, more precisely
on May 5 of that year, before the premiere of a long Disney cartoon in
Metropol, namely Fun and Fancy Free ("Bongo and Mickey and the Bean
Stick"). But unlike Disney's long cartoons before the war, in this case
there were 2 less long cartoons put together into one program. An event that
Disney used at the time, because such cartoons were shorter time in production
and which could therefore get out in cinemas faster and hopefully record some
of a lot of money that would partly be used to maintain staff and partly make
it possible. to finance new cartoon productions.
In fact, Disney's long
cartoons first returned to Metropol and other Copenhagen cinemas during the
1950s, and then alternated regularly with the live-action films that Walt
Disney Productions had begun producing at the time, allegedly because it took
several years and therefore high cost to produce the long cartoons. The real
feature films could usually be recorded and produced in about a little over a
year, in some cases in an even shorter time, and these films could therefore
provide Walt Disney Productions with the much-needed revenue in between the
premieres of the long Disney cartoons.
As will be
indirectly apparent from the above, I have no special private memories to
convey from Christmas and New Year 1945, which have probably been celebrated in
my family much as these two holidays had become in so many previous years. It
should be mentioned, however, partly that in December a much-needed larger load
of petrol, coal, petroleum and oil had been supplied to Copenhagen, and partly
that the authorities' ban on firing fireworks was maintained, except that there
were almost obviously daring people, perhaps especially younger men and older
children, who did not comply with the ban. However, there was no major unrest.
Preview of "Fyrtøjet"
For my own part,
the days, weeks and months went by as usual, as did the teaching at the Academy
of Free and Mercantile Art. At the end of April, however, something happened
that meant a small change in the daily routine. One day, Jean Jallit, whom we otherwise rarely saw, suddenly came in the
door of our classroom and asked for me. It turned out that his office by a for
me unknown reason had been sent a letter that was addressed to me. The envelope
was from Dansk Farve- og Tegnefilm A/S and Film Centralen
Palladium, and it was with almost restrained breathing that I opened it and
could see that it contained 4 free tickets to "Fyrtøjet"'s
preview in the Palladium cinema on Wednesday May 15th, 1946 at 2 p.m. So I had
to ask for time off from teaching that afternoon.
It was a bit of a
disappointment and a dilemma for me that I only got four free tickets at my
disposal, because who besides myself, should I invite to the premiere? However,
it was immediately clear that mother should of course join, and it was equally
clear that father unfortunately could not come because he could not afford to
take time off from his work. Of course, I could have invited my two brothers,
aged 9 and 12, respectively, but that did not come up, because I had actually
promised my dear old grandparents a long time ago that they would attend the
premiere of the cartoon as their second eldest grandson. had worked on for a
full two years and told them so much about. There was also the special reason
that my grandfather had once said to me when we talked about the "Fyrtøjet” movie: "Yes, Ry, you probably know that I
never put my feet in a cinema, but when "Fyrtøjet"
will be finished and will be shown in the cinema, I would like to go in and see
it! "
To understand the
significance of the grandfather's opinion on the said occasion, one must know
and remember that he certainly was not anyone likes of neither literature,
theater or film that he all considered upper-class cultural means to
indoctrinate and "seduce" the working class to believe and accept
that power and thus right was in the hands of the possessors. It was therefore
with particular joy and great pride that I learned that he stood by his words,
when I paid my grandparents a visit a few days later, to invite them to the
premiere of "Fyrtøjet".
It must be added
here that the long-awaited premiere of Danish cartoon's first long cartoon, ie "Fyrtøjet", had
received a lot of press coverage in the autumn of 1944, i.a.
in Politiken, but e.g. also in Aftenbladet. In the
latter magazine, I was mentioned in all modesty in connection with a photo of
me, where I sit deeply concentrated and draw at the light desk:
"Danish
cartoon’s coming man? It is the 16-year-old Harry Rasmussen who has the credit
for some of the figures of "Fyrtøjet".
"- Caption and photo © 1944 Aftenbladet. - It
must be added that as a born on June 12, 1929, I was not yet 16 years at this
time, but was only 15 years old.
The large cinema
Palladium's entrance in May 1946, probably shortly after "Fyrtøjet" had premiered. The film was played at. 4, 6,
8 and 10 (ie 16, 18, 20 and 22), and it was
tentatively sold out for the first three performances of the day.
Incidentally, it
was with a strange feeling that I, together with my mother and grandparents, on
May 15 shortly before 12 noon showed up in the large foyer of the Palladium
cinema, where a number of people had already arrived, who had apparently also
been invited with to the premiere of "Fyrtøjet".
The cinema hall itself was huge and had 1,200 seats, and the premiere guests
could not fill these, so tickets were also sold to the general public. However,
not many of the latter were present this early afternoon, which was a regular
day of the week, namely a Wednesday. But it was undeniably a special experience
to see the cinema facade covered by a large sign announcing that the cinema was
now playing the first Danish feature film "Fyrtøjet",
just as it made an impression to see the many scenes in the wall cabinets in
the foyer, of which I immediately recognized the vast majority.
But strangely, I
did not see a single one of my former colleagues come and greet me and my
family, who were also difficult to spot as the foyer filled with premiere
guests and the general public. Even more bizarre, it seemed to me that I and my
colleagues and our relatives were placed in vastly different places around the
great hall among the general cinema audience. The hall was not fully occupied
either, but there were enough people to make the premiere fairly festive, and
in addition there was the advantage that there were also ordinary spectators
present, that you could watch their reactions to the film. But it undeniably
amazed me that we former employees were not invited to any after-show treats,
as is customary.
However, I was
obviously excited to see the result of more than two years of huge work and
effort, and especially to see the last half of the film, which I had not yet
had the opportunity to see. The first half of the film, as previously
mentioned, I had probably seen at a special screening at the Grand Theater in
1944, but without sound, so therefore I - like my colleagues - was also excited
to hear what one had gotten out of the audio side.
It was of course a
proud little me, as I could see and read my name on the film's forewords on the
big screen of the Palladium cinema, even with the same size writing, as was the
case with the film's initiator and skilled background painter, Finn Rosenberg Ammitsted, and assistant animator and cartoonist Mogens Mogensen. But at the same
time I was happy to see the names of my good colleagues and also employees on
the film: Arne Jømme Jørgensen
(intermediate artist), Otto Jacobsen (animator and background painter), Helge Hau, Bodil Rønnow
and Erling Bentsen (the latter three were
intermediate cartoonists).
The performance
began as usual with the light being dimmed in the cinema hall, and including
the first notes and melodies from the film, played by Mogens
Kilde on the cinema organ, which slowly and slightly
solemnly came spinning from the stage floor. It was the first time I had had
the opportunity to hear the music for the film, as its soundtrack had largely
only been recorded and recorded after I had left Dansk Farve-
og Tegnefilm A/S. An
exception, however, was the princess' song "I feel like the bird in the
cage". I and several other of the studio's staff had heard it at the time,
a member of the Radio's Girls' Choir, later an opera singer at the Royal Danish
Opera. Theater, Kirsten Hermansen, audition in the autumn of 1943.
But right from the
beginning and even before the carpet was gone, I could see with a nervous but
at the same time pleasant shudder that the music made an impression, both on me
and the rest of the audience, by its very professional character and its
cheerful as well as lyrical and dramatic insert. It was clear that the two
composers, Eric Christiansen and Vilfred Kjær, must have had the music for Disney's "Snow
White" in mind when they wrote the music.
When finally Mogens Kilde finished the
overture and the cinema organ was again turned and lowered into its
"grave", and the light was dimmed in the great hall and the curtain
slid aside, while the first images and tones from the film itself sounded up
from the great , white canvas, well, then I did not really know where to make
of myself. After all, this was the day and hour when reviewers and the audience
had to pronounce their "judgment" over my colleagues and my great
joint work. But to my delight, I was fortunately able to state that the sound
side of the film was fairly acceptable, despite its shortcomings, including
that it was especially tricky with the synchronicity between image and sound,
which I knew was mainly due to the fact that the sound had only been recorded
and recorded after that the image page was made. But neither the critics nor
the general public knew, and the so-called synchronicity between image and
sound could not, of course, serve as an excuse for the film's technically not
quite perfect quality. In terms of style as well as animation, "Fyrtøjet" was and is unequal, but the reasons or the
reasons for this, as it were, neither the audience nor the reviewers know. Both
parties can, must and should of course only take the result at immediate face
value and must not in their assessment primarily take into account the
conditions and conditions under which a film has been produced.
However, as
directly implicated in the making of a film, one is partially handicapped in
its experience and assessment of it, and that was of course also the case for
me. I was just sitting and waiting for when the first scene I had worked on
appeared, and it undeniably went beyond my immediate experience of the film,
which I pretty much knew inside and out in almost every detail. But first and
foremost, I nodded recognizant to every single background, figure, and
animation that I had become familiar and familiar with through the two years I
myself had worked on "The Lighthouse." In fact, there was not that
scene in the film that I did not know in advance, for everything had imprinted
itself indelibly in my mind.
It must be added
here and repeated that in the summer of 1944, my colleagues and I, almost two
years earlier, had had the opportunity to see about half of "Fyrtøjet" at a special performance in the Grand
Theater in Mikkel Bryggersgade. But on that occasion,
the film had been shown as a silent film, as the soundtrack had not yet been
made at that time.
It was therefore
for several reasons a familiar scene to me, apart from the sound, as the
singing guard appeared around the street corner and walked towards the
foreground, where he stopped and hauled his pocket lark out from the inside
pocket and took a sip from the bottle. It was celluloids with the guard from
this particular scene, I as the first job at all in my time at Dansk Farve- og Tegnefilm
was put to practice painting. The guard was animated by Bjørn
Frank Jensen, and despite certain weaknesses belonged to some of the better
form of animation in "Fyrtøjet". But I
thought then and also later that the guard went a bit too
"mechanical" and that he was animated too soft in the movements at
all. Moreover, the figure did not appear present, even in the close-up, where
he drinks from the pocket lark, and when he sang, it was not actually experienced
as if it were the voice of the drawn figure, which was partly due to the
guard's mouth movements being asynchronous with that voice. who was to imagine
his.
This with
synchronicity between sound and image was related to at least three factors:
First, because neither production manager Allan Johnsen nor screenwriter Peter
Toubro had any prior knowledge of cartoon technique. None of them had engaged
in nor been interested in the concept and phenomenon of cartoons. Secondly, it
was due to the fact that the initiator of the production of the feature-length
film "Fyrtøjet", the advertising cartoonist
Finn Rosenberg, also had no knowledge of cartoon technique. Thirdly, the
leading creative employees, Børge Hamberg
and Bjørn Frank Jensen, had enough sense of cartoon
technique, but the two had no impact on Allan Johnsen, who was mostly focused
on the financial and economic side of the production process. It was not really
reluctance on his part, but rather a certain caution, which was due to the fact
that his main task was to make sure that there was enough money in the coffers
to be able to carry out the hitherto untested and unique project in Danish film
history. Seen against that background, Johnsen must be forgiven.
The first scenes
that Bjørn Frank Jensen drew and animated in "Fyrtøjet",
namely the night watchman, which goes its round in the city's empty
streets. For these he even painted the backgrounds himself, which, however,
only happened in these cases. It was primarily Finn Rosenberg who drew layouts
and painted backgrounds.
Then came some
scenes that were animated by Kjeld Simonsen (Simon), who was a skilled artist
and actually also a good animator, but his animation had the great weakness
that the characters' movements were generally too slow and too soft. In one
scene, some rats hide in hiding through a hole in the house wall, and in
another scene, a black cat is seen lying asleep on the ridge of a house. In
both cases, it is the guard and his song that make its impact, and the cat
wakes up, yawns and jumps down from the roof and disappears.
But now I held my
breath, for now came a scene which I had in-between drawn, though not as the
first intermediate drawing I had made on "Fyrtøjet",
for this and the following scene were not made until a month after I had begun
at Dansk Farve- og Tegnefilm. The former scene depicted an interior of a
church tower, and here one sees an owl sitting and sleeping on top of one of
the beams of the tower. The owl wakes up, looks out at the spectators, blinks
its eyes, takes off and flies out of one of the open windows in the background
of the tower. The stage was animated by my teacher Børge
Hamberg and, as mentioned, in-betweens were drawn by
me.
The following scene
is a total Vue over the city with the Round Tower jutting out into the
background. The owl comes in from the foreground and flies towards the tower.
For this scene, Børge Hamberg
had only made quite a few key-poses, and he left it to me to animate and draw
the rest of the scene. It was my debut as a so-called assistant animator, and
in this capacity I also worked in the immediately following scene, which is a
semi-total of the top of the Round Tower with the observatory. In the dim glow
from here, an astronomical pair of binoculars can be seen, which scans the
starry sky above. The owl is seen landing on the lattice railing around the
observatory. For this scene, Hamberg had actually
only made two sketches: one where the owl enters at the top of the picture, and
one where it sits on the railing. It had been my task to animate the owl
between these two positions, and it succeeded to the satisfaction of my
teacher.
After several
scenes with the astrologer, the king, the queen, the princess, and three
lackeys that I had nothing to do with, finally came a scene that I was especially
proud to have the middle sign. It is a scene with a rooster standing on the
edge of a wooden tub and galloping as a sign that it is morning now. The
rooster is animated by my teacher, Børge Hamberg, and in my opinion represents some of the very best
animation in "Fyrtøjet". The animation is
simply masterful and can be compared to the best animation in Disney's older
short as well as long cartoons.
A good example of
how Børge Hamberg could
also draw and animate other than the soldier, the witch, the crow and the big
and the smallest dog, is seen in the sequence where the time is the morning
after the astrologer at Rundetårn has seen in the
stars that the country's princess will marry a simple soldier, and immediately
before the scene in which the soldier is introduced in the film. From inside
the town, there is a tone over to a farm in the country, and here is seen the
rooster, which has jumped up on a tub, where it crows its well-known kykkeliky. The In-betweens were drawn by me, Harry
Rasmussen. The background is painted by Finn Rosenberg.
Then the soldier is
introduced to a scene that I had nothing to do with, but which I had partly
seen become and partly had seen during the performance in Grand. However, this
was not the first scene with the soldier that was animated during the
production process, as Børge Hamberg
had already animated a few other scenes with the film's actual protagonist. But
as I have discussed this scene in more detail during the discussion of "Fyrtøjet"'s production process on the website Dansk Tegnefilms Historie 1919 - 2000,
www.tegnefilmhistorie.dk, I will not repeat it here. But from this scene is cut
to a scene where the pervasive figure, the crow, is seen sitting on a branch
protruding through the image. The crow looks down curiously as the soldier (not
seen in the picture) passes by under the tree. It is so intensely preoccupied
with looking for the soldier that it turns vertically around the branch and
ends up with its head down. Then it uses the wings as a kind of hands, grabbing
the branch and straightening up in a sitting position again. I had been an
animation assistant and in-between artist on this stage, but that the result
was as successful as it is, was of course Børge Hamberg's merit.
This was followed
by a scene where the soldier marches whistling away along the country road, but
this and a couple of subsequent scenes with the marching soldier, I have also
mentioned earlier and should therefore not repeat this either. But after the
above-mentioned previous scene, one again sees the crow in the same situation
as before, but now it takes off from the branch and flies out to the left of
the picture. I was also an assistant animator and in-betweener on this scene,
and one must unfortunately say that there are too many intervening drawings
when the crow flies, because the movement takes place almost in slow motion,
which is not intentional. Therefore, I curled my toes in my shoes when I saw
the scene here for the very first time, because unfortunately no line test had been
done of the animation, and therefore this was not corrected.
After various
scenes with the marching soldier, the crow is seen again, this time flying to
the witch's tree and sitting near the large hole seen at the top of the trunk. Børge Hamberg had only suggested
the animation of the crow in this scene, but let me finish drawing and
in-between drawing it, and the result was fairly satisfactory. So that scene I
tolerated well to revisit.
Now followed some
scenes with the witch, of which I had in-between drawn several and animated a
few. And it is in this sequence that for the first time in the film one hears
the soldier's voice during his initial but concise conversation with the witch,
and it was at least with great joy that I recognized the voice as belonging to
the popular and talented actor Poul Reichhardt. He and his voice had exactly the manly, witty
and subtle character that suits the main character of "Fyrtøjet".
But I had single-handedly
animated a close up of the witch's hand with the knot stick, which she uses as
a stick, and also a scene in which she ties the soldier a knit around his
waist, and finally a scene in which she twists an "N-o-o-o-o" to the
soldier's call to her to tell him what she is going to use the lighter for.
There was another
scene with the witch, which Børge Hamberg
left to me to both draw and animate, and I naturally did my best, but was not
even completely satisfied with the final result when I saw the test film.
However, the scene was approved without comment. But in the same sequence came
the scene with the crow, which I had also drawn and animated with my own hands,
namely the one in which the crow sits on the edge of the hole and watches the
soldier, while he lets himself down four into the hollow tree by means of the
witch's rope. However, the animation of the crow was relatively simple here, as
it only turns its head slightly from side to side.
One of my first
independent animation assignments was a scene where the crow sits up in the
tree near the hole and watches what the soldier is doing. Børge
Hamberg allowed me to both draw and animate the crow,
and I was naturally proud and happy about that. My animation was line tested
and approved with acclamation, and I was awarded a bonus of DKK 50. However,
this first independent animation assignment was only a small beginning in
relation to what followed.
After various
scenes with the soldier down in the hollow tree, then come the scenes where the
soldier gradually meets the three dogs, and on these scenes I acted as
assistant animator and interlocutor for Børge Hamberg, but only as regards the smallest and the largest
of the three dogs. The middle dog is seen only as a motionless drawing.
Particularly dramatic is the sequence and the scenes with the big dog, which I
was in all modesty an in-betweener. The dog's character and the animation of
this, as well as of the soldier in these scenes, was and is alone Børge Hamberg's great merit.
One of the first
scenes, Børge Hamberg drew
and animated with the smallest of the witch's three dogs, the one guarding the
treasure chest with copper money. The soldier, who was of course key-drawn by Hamberg, was in-between drawn by Arne "Jømme" Jørgensen, while the
dog was intermediate-drawn by me, Harry Rasmussen.
A scene with the
little dog, who is so happy at the sight of the witch's apron that it starts
wagging its tail and licking its mouth. With this animation, Børge Hamberg showed his great
ability and strength as a character animator. The dog is also here in-betweened by me, Harry Rasmussen, who in this way was
partly trained in the difficult art of animation and partly prepared to later
take over the animation of the little dog.
This is followed by
a series of scenes from "Fyrtøjet", each of
which represents a scene in the sequence. The soldier is drawn and animated by Børge Hamberg and in-betweened drawn by Mogens Mogensen, the dog is also drawn and animated by Børge Hamberg, but in-betweened drawn by me, Harry Rasmussen. The backgrounds are
painted by Finn Rosenberg.
A subsequent scene
in the same sequence as above: As the soldier enters the large dog's chamber,
the dog's eyes emit like two searchlights following the soldier, hesitantly
approaching the giant dog's seat on top of the treasure chest with the gold
coins. Animation: Børge Hamberg.
In-between drawing: Harry Rasmussen. Background: Finn Rosenberg.
In the scene
mentioned above, the soldier is seen kneeling down in front of the huge dog and
laying the witch's magic scarf on the tile floor. The scarf soothes the dog so
that it willingly accepts the soldier and what he is doing.
This is followed by
a longer sequence with a series of scenes, which show a course of action with
the soldier and one of the three dogs. The animation of the soldier in the
scenes in the sequence in which he appears shows with all the desired clarity
that Børge Hamberg had now
gained control of the soldier's movements and character. And the movements were
solely drawn and animated based on the animator's ability for motion analysis,
timing and key drawing. There was thus no question of using rotoscopy,
i.e. of live action footage as a basis for the animation.
Then followed some
scenes with the witch alone in the picture, which Hamberg
drew and animated and which I drew the in-betweens. Among other things. one
where the witch shouts to the soldier down in the hollow tree: "Do you
have Fyrtøjet with you !?" This is one of those
scenes that is cross-cut from time to time to see what the soldier is doing
down in the hollow tree. Animation: Børge Hamberg. In-between drawing: Harry Rasmussen.
To the witch's
question, the soldier answers: “No, I had almost forgotten that! But now I have
to pick it up! ”, After which he goes back to the cave, to pick up the lighter,
which is left in a niche where it lies in a leather purse. Then you see a close
up of the soldier's hand reaching in and taking the purse with him. I was
allowed to draw and animate this scene, especially because Børge
Hamberg had found out that I was good at drawing
hands. However, it was not until the autumn of 1944 that I made the stage, but
for the sake of context, a picture from it is shown here. I was glad to see
this scene again, because here I was satisfied for once, both with the design
and with the animation, which can hardly be done much better than is
objectively the case.
In a close-up of
the witch, she refuses to answer the soldier's question about what to do with
the old lighter. The stage was left to me to draw and animate, but even I do
not really think I managed to draw the witch, so she looked exactly like the
witch that Hamberg drew. However, he was very well
pleased with my efforts.
When the soldier
has come up from the tree again and has the lighthouse with him, he asks the
witch what she wants to do with the old lighthouse. He does not know, she
answers angrily, to which he threatens to cut off her head if she does not want
to answer his questions. As she continues to refuse, the soldier pulls out his
sword and chops off the head of the
basically caseless and defenseless witch.
Inserted can be
found i.a. a few scenes with the crow: one where the frightened
one flies up from the hole and disappears behind a branch, and one where the
crow enters the picture from above and flies out of the picture and away. The
crow is in these scenes drawn and animated by me. The witch is also seen in
this scene where she is looking for the crow.
Half-close by the
soldier, who has pulled and raised his saber, ready to chop off the head of the
basically pointless witch. There is very little animation in this scene, with
the soldier anticipating his blow. But the soldier still seems 'alive' and
present. The stage was drawn by Mogens Mogensen.
Half-close to the
witch, who seeks to defend herself, to avoid the soldier's saber, but in vain.
But you do not see directly that he chops off her head, it is only heard on the
music, which is very dramatic at this point in the film. Also in this scene
there is not much animation, but only the hint of a movement, as the witch has
lifted one arm and as it were stretching the averting forward. The scene was
drawn by me, Harry Rasmussen.
One of the scenes
in the sequence was the crow in close-up, where one sees its violent reaction
to the soldier chopping off the witch's head. This scene was one of the first
and most successful animations I made in "The Lighthouse". After my
animation of the crow had been line tested and approved, this time with
bravura, Johnsen came over again and stood next to me and said in a low voice:
“Your scene with the crow was good! Go over to the office and pick up a bonus
check for DKK 90, which is waiting for you!” I was sincerely surprised by the
generosity that the management showed me again, and I was completely shy about
the situation, so I only managed to come up with a well-meaning "Thank
you!".
The animation of
the crow in that scene with the crow's reaction to
the soldier chopping off the witch's head is, in my own opinion - and also
others' - one of the most successful scenes I contributed to in the feature
film "Fyrtøjet". The scene was drawn in
1944, when I was just 15 years old. But even today, the animation seems fairly
professional and acceptable.
It is a slightly
harsh scene, where you see the witch's severed head lying at the root of the
tree, while the soldier, unaffected by his misdeed, sticks his saber back into
the sheath. But there is from H.C. Andersen's side put the symbolic in the
action that the 'hero' frees himself from superstition and the black magic, and
this is probably how one should perceive the fairy tale "Fyrtøjet".
One scene that I
particularly looked forward to revisiting was the one in which the three
lackeys help the king put on the royal garb, because he has to "go down
and rule", because it had taken me a whole month to draw. The scene, which
was animated by my teacher Børge Hamberg,
I had already had the opportunity to see when the first half of "Fyrtøjet" was shown in the Grand Theater in May 1944.
The scene was largely successful, even though the characters did not quite
resemble the same figures in Bjørn Frank Jensen's
line. In addition, the stage was marred by the so-called "sewing
threads", which in fact should not have been involved and which were not
necessary either, as the movements of the figures did not take place at a pace
that required speed streaks.
Here the three
lackeys are seen in the process of helping the king of the nightgown and
instead put on His Majesty's royal attire, just before he has to "go down
and rule", as he himself expresses himself. It is one of the film's
longest scenes - too long, some will probably think - which could probably have
been divided into several sub-scenes with semi-close and close camera settings.
But Hamberg chose to make the scene as it appears in
the film.
But I was
especially excited to see the youngest of the three dogs in the scenes with
this one later in the movie I had drawn and animated. The reunion reassured me
because I still thought the animation was reasonably successful, even though I
thought and believe that the character as a character could probably have been
better drawn on my part. But after all, I was only 15 years old when the work
was on and of course far from fully qualified as an artist and animator.
The scenes with the
crow towards the end of the film, which I had drawn and animated, i.a. the scene where it sits on top of the gallows and
watches what is going on on the scaffold, and the
scene in which it has hung itself, I saw again with a certain pride and joy.
The same was true of the scene where in close up you see the soldier's hands
estimate the lighter. Along with the scenes with the smallest dog stopping in
front of a door and pointing to the cross the court lady has struck on it to be
able to recognize and rediscover the place, and the scene where the same dog
stops on the way to the gallows hill and scratches behind the ear, the
mentioned scenes are probably among the best I have personally contributed in
"Fyrtøjet".
For my own part,
during the fall of 1944, I got several scenes with the smallest dog to draw and
animate. In addition, it was also left to me to draw and animate some scenes
with the court lady, as well as various small scenes with other characters. But
there were two scenes in particular, one with the dog and one with the crow,
which were considered so successful that they each triggered a bonus of DKK 90
and DKK 125, respectively. Such amounts were, as previously mentioned, for
money to count at the time, and although of course it did not happen so often
that a bonus or premium was paid, it was a noticeable supplement to the weekly
salary and also an encouragement and incentive to continue to provide its very
best.
In addition, I was
left completely independent to design and animate a scene with a taxi driver
and his horse, which is parked in the street in front of Nikolaj Church, where
the soldier is and is handing out carousels from a basket he has bought from a
cake wife. In addition to throwing pretzels to the happy children, the soldier
also throws a few pretzels at the horse, who effortlessly catches these in the
air with his gap. The taxi driver does not see any of it, because he has sat
down to rest on the carriage's step board and has fallen asleep.
The day after his
arrival in the city, the soldier goes to the clothing dealer on Nikolaj Plads, to exchange his used uniform with new, civilian
clothes. Just opposite at the foot of Nikolaj tower sits the cake cone with her
basket selling cumin pretzels. A group of children play and sing nearby. The
soldier buys the whole basket and hands out pretzels to all the children. Below
you see a horse-drawn carriage holding some distance away. The driver has sat
down to rest on the footstool of the taxi, while the horse apparently follows
what the soldier and the children are doing, and he also throws a few pretzels
at it. - The horse, carriage and driver are here drawn and animated by me,
Harry Rasmussen. The background is painted by Finn Rosenberg.
After the soldier
has been drained of money by his so-called 'friends', he has to give up his
fine clothes to the clothing dealer and exchange these with his old uniform. To
emphasize the soldier's somewhat sad situation, the exchange has been allowed
to take place on a rainy day. While he is inside the clothing store, the crow
has sat in the gutter just above the store, where the drench follows what is
going on. - The crow and the rain are drawn and animated by me, Harry
Rasmussen. The background is painted by Finn Rosenberg.
After following the
dog, which has brought the princess to the soldier's lodging at the inn, the
court lady trots back and forth in the rain while she waits for what will
happen next. However, she soon gets tired of waiting, and a seemingly bright
whim therefore makes her knock on the door so she will be able to recognize the
place again, after which she hurries back towards the castle. The court lady is
here drawn and animated by me, Harry Rasmussen. The background is painted by
Finn Rosenberg. –
Immediately after
the court lady leaves the place, the dog returns to the inn, to pick up the princess
and bring her back to the castle. However, it gets there before the court lady,
who is now impatiently trotting around the castle bridge, waiting for the dog
to return, which it does, but only to grab the annoying court lady's life and
throw her into the moat. Shortly after, her head appears over the water,
immediately spitting a jet of water and a fish out of her mouth. The court lady
mm. is fully drawn and animated by Harry Rasmussen. The backgrounds are painted
by Finn Rosenberg.
There were also two
scenes from the situation where the smallest of the three dogs arrives at the
inn, on whose door the court lady has struck a large, white cross. The dog
brakes up and sits in front of the door, pointing to the cross, laughing
because it has obviously got a good idea. Both scenes are drawn and animated by
me, Harry Rasmussen. The latter scene brought in a bonus of $ 90. The
background painted by Finn Rosenberg.
At the time in the
film, where the three dogs have been present outside at the gallows hill and
are helping to prevent the soldier from being hanged, the crow has been sitting
waiting on the gallows itself and watching everything that happens. Now,
however, its 'mission' as a symbol of death has been played out, and therefore
it leaves the place. - The crow is here drawn and animated by Harry Rasmussen.
The background is painted by Finn Rosenberg.
But just as
exciting was the day my teacher Børge Hamberg, who since the middle of 1944 had given me
relatively many independent animation tasks, one day gave me the task of
animating the last scene with the crow, namely the one where it has hung in the
shattered tree of the witch. It took me about three to four days to animate the
scene, because I myself undertook to make the in-between drawings as well.
As was the case
with so many of the scenes I animated, my pencil drawings of the hung crow were
recorded as so-called line tests, to check if the animation were in order and
could be approved or possibly had to be corrected or maybe completely redone. The
latter, by the way, had never been the case with the scenes I had animated so
far. The result of the line test I was told in the way that Johnsen a few days
later came over to the drawing room and immediately went to me while I was
sitting behind the drawing desk and working. Here he stood on my right side,
leaned down towards me and said in a low voice: “There is a check for DKK 125
for you in the office! It's for your scene with the hung crow! ” Then Johnsen
straightened up and went to talk to Børge Hamberg, and shortly after he left the drawing room again,
where he had come less and less often lately. This was in all probability due
to the fact that the relationship between him and the staff had been rather
strained for the past six months, and he therefore did not want to provoke the
in several ways hard-pressed staff with his presence more than absolutely
necessary.
I myself had no
problem associating with Johnsen, perhaps because he always treated me with
something resembling paternal care, and moreover, there was no doubt that he,
despite my young age, respected my professional prowess. Admittedly, he himself
did not have much sense of it, but partly he could directly see if the
animation seemed as intended, and partly he knew that the other and somewhat
older animators recognized my relatively great abilities as an artist and
animator.
However, the
production company Dansk Farve- og
Tegnefilm A/S was in dire need of money to complete
the film. The continued production of the feature film "Fyrtøjet" was fortunately made possible thanks to the
fortunate fact that Filmselskabet Palladium A/S
entered with new capital and as a distributor of the film.
At that time, it
was just about to ebb with animation tasks on "Fyrtøjet"
for me, as all scenes with the witch, the crow and the smallest of the dogs
were fully animated. But during his review of the very large part of the film,
which was already in working copy, Methling thought
that some scenes were missing in the sequence out on Dyrehavsbakken.
"It must be something for you to do!", He came and said to me one
morning, shortly after he had been hired as director and organizer of the film.
That he addressed me with "you" was quite unusual at the time, but
since he could easily have been my grandfather, it actually seemed very natural
to me that he did, and moreover it felt safe and confidential. "I want
you," he continued, "to draw Pierrot, his hand in a close-up taking
the burning tow from a bowl, and a semi-total picture of where he puts the tow
in his mouth and eats it, to finally blow some smoke rings straight out towards
the audience so that these rings can make the transition to the spinning
lottery wheel!”
It was so far an
interesting task to draw and animate Bakken's Pierrot, but how long it took me
to animate the mentioned scenes, I do not remember now so many years after.
However, it has hardly taken more than a week.
Another deposit
scene, which Methling wanted made, occurs in the inn,
where the soldier comes home late after spending all his money on the
'friends', and the innkeeper therefore refers him to the attic chamber. Methling wanted to show the time, and it was to take place
using a cuckoo, which showed at. 2. Also this scene was left to me to draw and
animate and Methling said he would give me completely
free hands. Normally, the cuckoo would come out on the blow and in this case
poop twice, and then disappear in behind his gate again. However, the idea came
to me, first to let the cuckoo come out after the long pointer was on full and
the small pointer on 2, but without any cockroach being heard. It was because
the cuckoo bird had slept over it. It rubs its eyes and looks at the clock,
after which it, a little confused, hurries to hand over its delayed cuckoo,
cuckoo. Then I let the double door into the cuckoo's hide close before the bird
had reached inside, so that it was almost pushed back in through the double
door. I and several others, including Allan Johnsen, thought it was funny, but Methling found that the latter 'gag' disturbed the action
unnecessarily. Therefore, he cut off this part of the scene, which I thought
was perfectly fine, as I well understood that Methling's
task was to keep the whole film in mind.
The scenes that my
older and more experienced and skilled colleagues had drawn and animated, I
have already described in detail in previous sections of the cartoon history,
where I have also allowed myself to give an assessment of the animation, and it
should therefore not be repeated here. Except that the animation that made the
biggest impression and impressed me the most were some of Børge
Hamberg's scenes with the soldier. Especially the
scenes that take place down in the witch's hollow tree inside at the big dog, I
still thought belonged to some of the best non-rotoscoped animation of a
serious character that has ever been made during the history of the cartoon.
But just as
interesting and decisive, of course, were the audience's reactions to "Fyrtøjet". The impression was that these were fairly
restrained, however, a quiet laugh was occasionally heard here and there in the
hall, but as far as I could judge, the audience did not feel captivated or
gripped by the action of the film. Nor when the soldier was apprehended,
imprisoned, sentenced to death by hanging and led out to the gallows outside
the city. Maybe the slightly cool reaction was partly due to the fact that most
of the audience probably knew the end of the adventure in advance, and it was
probably just sitting there waiting. But the reason for the audience's
indifference was, in my perhaps unqualified opinion, largely due to the lack of
vitality in the soldier and the other characters in the film, not least in the
princess, and it presumably caused the audience not to be able to identify themselves.
with first and foremost the film's two romantic main characters, the soldier
and the princess.
The lack of
vitality of the soldier and the other characters in the film probably meant
that the audience did not see themselves able to identify with first and
foremost the soldier, and unfortunately not at all with the poor princess, who
was kept isolated in a tower room. In the latter case, many audience members
still had a fairly fresh memory of how lively, touching and relevant the
beautiful Snow White was in the "Snow White film". She was felt when
she was ill, and she was rejoiced and amused when she was well.
The best thing that
can be said in my opinion about the "Fyrtøjet
film", as far as the action is concerned, is that it pretty much hits the
witty and fresh-fired tone in which Andersen has told his story. But the
critics as well as the ordinary the audience had presumably expected something
different and more, perhaps especially from the personal characteristics. With
its large, epic cartoons, of which the Copenhagen cinema audience at the time
had only had the opportunity to see "Snow White" and
"Bambi", had accustomed the audience to having fun, shedding a tear
or two and finally cheering. , that despite various battles between the evil
and the good, everything ended well and happily in the end. In addition,
Disney's cartoons had accustomed people to the fact that cartoons, both
technically and animatedly, should be top class, and none of the parts could be
said to be the case for "Fyrtøjet". I have
previously given a description of why this was not the case, nor could it be,
and should therefore not repeat the explanation here.
The short of the long,
however, is that most critics in 1946 agreed that "Fyrtøjet"
was not a successful cartoon, but despite this, the film was a very nice
audience success.
For my own part, I
was so disappointed with the reviewers' verdict on "Fyrtøjet"
- and so were most of my former colleagues as well - that I would rather not
hear a word more about it. I decided that it would be best to forget the film
and not give it more thought, but instead concentrate on the present, which
would say about the drawing lessons I was currently attending as a student. At
that time, I thought that my future as a draftsman should preferably be within
the field of illustration drawing, or at least I would rather draw
"serious" drawings.
Our drawing
school's class teacher, Jens Andreasen, had succeeded in arousing my and
several other students' interest in some of the great artists and graphic
artists of the time. Among these were especially Danish names such as Aksel Jørgensen, Sikker Hansen, Arne Ungermann, Ib Andersen, Marlie Brande and
Jane Muus, and of foreign names it was i.a. Käte Kollwich,
Vincent van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec m.fl. However,
there were two graphic artists and painters that Jens Andreasen put at the top
of all, and that was the English mystic William Blake and the Danish religious
painter Niels Larsen Stevns, and in this I at least
completely agreed, especially with regard to the latter.
The Film
Museum's screening series
One of the things
that had a significant influence on my cultural upbringing and on my view of
the world was when in the autumn of 1946 I signed up as a participant in a film
screening series of so-called documentaries, which the Danish Film Museum had
arranged. The museum had been established in 1942, and first belonged to Dansk Kulturfilm (established 1932), but from 1947 it became an
independent institution with its own board. 1958 changed to a state institution
under the administrative management of the Statens Filmcentral, but according to the Film Act of May 21, 1964,
the museum got its own administration.
But in 1946, the
Danish Film Museum had its screening room in Frederiksberggade
25, 1st floor, where the photographer Peter Elfelt's first cinema had been
housed in 1901-02. The hall accommodated about 120 seats in 12 rows of chairs
of 10 seats, and the canvas was not larger than about 3 x 4 meters. The first
short film program I saw was some documentary film - or perhaps rather some
propaganda film - for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, abbreviated FAO. The organization was established in 1945 with the aim
of supporting the development of agriculture in different countries and seeking
to prevent overproduction in some countries and famine in others.
One of the films
made a particularly strong impression because it showed that certain western
countries burned their overproduction of grain, while people in certain
countries in Africa and Asia died of starvation. It was, of course, outrageous
to get to know and witness, and therefore I thought - and many with me - it was
a great step forward in the world that a supranational body like the United
Nations with its many different subdivisions, including not least the FAO, had
been formed in the attempt to remedy the problems purely practically. A
significant obstacle to the success of the good intentions and efforts was,
however, the fact that the UN existed and still consists of a number of
independent nations, which had difficulty in a common foothold and therefore
did not have enough power to be able to change by the skewed and unfair
distribution of resources in the world.
Among the many
short films that were shown in the Film Museum's screening series were also
English documentaries from the war years. Among these films were particularly
short films such as Listen to Britain (1941; "The Voice of Britain")
and A Diary for Timothy (1945: "Diary of Timothy"). The films were
directed by one of the great directors of English documentary film, Humphrey
Jennings (1907-51), and depicted a day of war in London and the whole course of
the war, respectively, in such a way that the people, events and situations
became so present that one felt as a participant. It was especially Jennings'
meaningful alternation between movement and stillness, between sound and
silence, associated with a masterful cutting and sound technique that
captivated me and supposedly many others as well.
At one of the Film
Museum's later screenings, feature films were shown which in one way or another
were related to World War II. It was films like Fritz Lang's masterful film
from 1920s Berlin, "M" (1931) and his eerie and ominous Dr. Mabuse's Testament (1932-33), which is about an insane
psychiatric doctor who wants to conquer world domination through the use of a
certain psychopharmaceutical, but who ends up being put in a straitjacket at
the psychiatric hospital where he is a senior employee. According to Fritz
Lang's own explanation, the film is a paraphrase of the dictator Hitler's
personality and political ambitions, but in 1932-33, when the film was made, neither
Lang nor his staff could predict which direction Hitler's life and especially
his fate would take. Therefore, "Dr. Mabuse's
will" must be said to be visionary, as it finally foresaw Hitler as
dictator, even though it could not foresee that he apparently suffered death on
his own. Upon his appearance, the film was banned by the propaganda minister
Goebbels, who, however, offered Fritz Lang a job as a director of propaganda
films for the Nazi regime. Goebbels apparently did not know at the time that Lang
was a half-Jew. Fritz Lang, however, foresaw the danger and immediately chose
to leave Germany and travel to France. He left behind his wife, Thea von Harbou, who had otherwise written scripts for most of his
German films, including "Dr. Mabuse's
Will," but she apparently did not want to follow her husband into exile.
It also turned out that Thea von Harbou sympathized
with Nazism and that she could therefore continue her writing career in Nazi
Germany.
Fritz Lang stayed
for about two years in France, where he also only recorded a single film, Liliom (1933), before traveling to the United States in
1935. Here he quickly became one of Hollywood's most prominent film directors.
His first American feature film was Fury (1936; "The Avenger")
starring Spencer Tracy. The film's main theme is the individual struggle
against society, the latter represented by the small town's rabid citizens, who
have allowed themselves to be whipped into a lynching mood and who will
therefore take the law into their own hands, as the merchant (Spencer Tracy)
accused of murder has committed, is acquitted in court. The mob sets fire to
the prison while the business traveler is still in his cell, and everyone
thinks he has perished in the flames. However, he has survived the fire, but sustained
severe burns, which i.a. leaves large scars on his
face that he is not easy to recognize. He uses this situation to take revenge
on the people who led the unjust accusation against him.
A significant early
German tone film is Menschen am Sonntag (1929; "People on Sunday"),
for which the later world-famous film director Billy Wilder (1906-2002) wrote
the script, and which was directed by the also later famous American-born but
German raised director, Robert Siodmak (1900-1973).
The film that made a big impression on me is a documentary depiction of some
ordinary young Berliners' simple weekend, where they go on a one-day excursion
to the metropolitan countryside. As previously mentioned, Billy Wilder left
Germany after Hitler took power in 1933, and after a year in France, he
emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a journalist and
screenwriter, the latter in Hollywood. Here he wrote i.a.
the screenplay for Ninotchka (1934; "Ninotchka"), which was directed
by the German film director Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947), who, however, had
already come to Hollywood in 1923, where he remained until his death in 1947.
After writing
screenplays for several Hollywood films, Billy Wilder began in 1942 to stage
films for which he had also written the screenplay. His debut as a film
director came with the film The Major and the Minor (1942; "A Strange
Girl").
After Hitler took
power, Robert Siodmak went to Paris, where he filmed
up through the 1930s. But during the German occupation of France, he left the country
and traveled to Hollywood, where he stayed and made quite a few feature films.
In 1952, he returned to Germany and continued filming there.
Another and
probably considerably early German sound film was Die Dreigroschenoper
(1931; "Laser and rags"), which was staged by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
(1808-1967), who is also known for his psychoanalytic and social realist silent
films from the 1920s. One of these films was Die Freud lose Gasse
(1925; "Behind the Mask of Joy"), which, however, is most marked by the
fact that the two world stars Asta Nielsen and Greta
Garbo appear in it. At the Nazi takeover in 1933, Pabst emigrated to France,
where he recorded one of his masterpieces, Don Quixote, starring the famous
Russian bassist Fyodor Sjaljapin (1873-1938). A
glorious film, which was also shown in one of the Film Museum's screening
series. However, Pabst returned to Germany as early as 1940, but made only two
not very significant feature films during the rest of the war. After this, he
filmed in Austria, where his first film was a depiction of a historical case
from 1880s Hungary, which gave him the opportunity to make a strong pro Semitic
accusation against anti-Semitism.
The most gruesome
film shown in the screening series was probably the strongly anti-Semitic Jud Süss (1940; "The Jew Süss"),
whose director, Veit Harlan (1889-1964), was one of
Nazi Germany's most pro-Nazi and most hateful anti-Semitic film directors. He
worked directly under the supervision of Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels
and did everything possible to meet and satisfy his diabolical seduction of the
German people and its sympathizers. Veit Harlan was
married to the immensely popular Swedish actress Kristina Söderbaum
(1912-2001), who played the lead role in all his films before, during and after
the war. Two of the couple's films became huge audience successes during the
war, also here at home. It was Die Goldene Stadt
(1942; "The Golden City") and Immensee
(1943; "Dream Lake"), of which the latter in particular became a
staple for the male cinema audience due to its many daring indoor scenes with a
bunch of naked bathing nymphs frolicking in a large swimming pool.
After the war, Harlan
was charged with a crime against humanity specifically because of the movie
"The Jew Süss", but ended up being
acquitted. He then returned to his work as a film director during violent
protests, but none of his post-war films gained any special significance. His
wife was also "aufnazified", as it was
called, and she also returned to her work as a film actress, but she has not
made much of an impact since then either. The actor, Werner Krauss (1884-1959),
who had played the role of the Jewish financier, Süss
Oppenheimer, was also indicted after the war and was quarantined for a few
years, but then returned to his work at the Burgtheater
in Vienna, just as he recorded a few films in the period 1950-55.
Among the
interesting things about Veit Harlan as a human being
was, among other things, that in 1922 he married the Jewish-born actress and
cabaret singer Dora Gerson (1899-1943), but the couple divorced two years
later. She died with her family in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. In
1929, Harlan married the actress Hilde Körber
(1906-1969) and had three children with her before the marriage was dissolved
for political reasons related to Nazism. In 1937 he married Kristian Söderbaum, for whom he personally wrote several tragic
roles, which went straight into the German audience.
It is part of Veit Harlan's story that one of his daughters with Hilde Körber converted to the Mosaic faith and married a son of a
victim of the Holocaust. She committed suicide in 1989. Veit
Harlan's niece, actress Christiane Susanne Harlan (b. 1932), married film
director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), who was of Jewish descent. Under the name
Susanne Christian, she had a role in Kubrick's film Paths of Glory (1957, The
Way of Honor), in which the Jewish actress Kirk Douglas starred. Susanne Harlan
became a widow after Kubrick's death in 1999.
In the first years
after the war, Kristina Söderbaum was often subjected
to harassment off the stage and was also exposed to having rotten tomatoes
thrown at her. Personally, she regretted her participation in anti-Semitic
films, but the deed did not change. After her husband, Veit
Harlan, was again allowed to record films, she continued to have the lead
female lead role in his new films, such as in Die blaue
Stunde (1953, Den blå time),
Die Gefangene des Maharadscha
(1953, The prisoner of the Maharaja), Verrat an
Deutschland (1955, Betrayal of Germany), and Ich werde
dich auf Händen tragen
(1948; I will carry you on my hands ).
The last
professional collaboration between Harlan and Söderberg
was in his production in 1963 at the theater of August Strindberg's play A
Dream Play. After Harlan's death in 1964, Kristina Söderberg
continued as a recognized fashion photographer. In 1974 she got a role in the
feature film Karl May, and in 1983 she published her memoirs under the title Nichts bleibt immer
so ("Nothing Stays That Way Forever"). In her later years, she was
away from the stage and the public spotlight, but occasionally had minor roles
on film and in TV series. Her last film was with the now famous English actor
Hugh Grant (b. 1960) in the thriller Night Train to Venice (1994). She died in
a nursing home in northern Germany in 2001. Sic transit gloria.
The film museum
also had a series of screenings about classic Danish silent and sound films,
and on that occasion some of the film director Carl Th. Dreyer's feature films,
i.a. the famous Jeanne d'Arc
from 1928. It was recorded in France and was based on the court documents from
the "trial" that a northern French clerical court chaired by the
Bishop of Beauvais brought against the then only 19-year-old peasant daughter
Jeanne d'Arc (1412-31). Jeanne d'Arc
was accused of heresy and sorcery, and it was especially used against her that
she had worn a man's suit on her travels and campaigns.
It was the English
whose prisoner she was at the time who handed her over to prosecution. They had
an account to settle with her because on several occasions she had caused them
great difficulties. Thus she and the army unit of which she was leader
liberated the city of Orléans from English siege, which earned her the nickname
The Virgin of Orléans. She won a new victory at Patay
in 1429 and led the army to Reims so that Charles VII could be crowned in the
city's cathedral. But when she wanted to rescue Compiègne
in 1430, she was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English for
10,000 francs.
During the trial,
Jeanne d'Arc wanted no defender, but wanted to defend
herself, which she initially did with great joy. But when the verdict sounded
on the heretical fire, she broke down and confessed her guilt, at the same time
as she renounced what she had hitherto claimed, namely that it was heavenly
voices that had inspired her to act as she had done. She was then pardoned with
life imprisonment, but two days later she apparently regretted her weakness,
withdrawing the confession and putting on a new man's suit. It is believed that
she was either forced or tricked into doing so by the English who wanted her
executed. In any case, on May 30, 1431, she was burned at the stake in Rouen.
This horrific and inhuman form of punishment, created by fear and superstition,
which over time has cost so many people their lives, including especially
women, who were totally innocent were accused of witchcraft and sorcery.
However, there were
apparently several influential people who thought that Jeanne d'Arc had been convicted innocently, and in 1450 the French
government allowed the heresy process against her to resume, which led to the
verdict being overturned in 1456. Among the French people, she was considered
as a saint, but it was not until as late as 1920 that the Catholic Church
recognized her as such.
Carl Th. Dreyer
felt drawn to the tragedy of Jeanne d'Arc's fate, and
with the French Falconnetti in the title role, he
wanted to portray the human condition of life: suffering. A subject he also
brought up in the Day of Wrath (1943) and which he also dealt with in
"Jesus of Nazareth", which for financial reasons, however, only ended
in manuscript form. The latter script Dreyer had occasionally worked on since
1949, and in 1968 it was published in book form. Until the very end, Dreyer had
hoped that he would have succeeded in putting the finishing touches on his
life's work with the Jesus film, but the Danish Film Institute and the Ministry
of Culture did not have the funds to support the project with more than DKK 3
million. crowns, and that was far from enough to record the film for.
But of Dreyer's
other silent films, the Film Museum showed i.a. his
debut film, The President (1920), and also Leaves of Satan's Book (1921) and
You Must Honor Your Wife (1925) as well as Dreyer's earliest sound film:
Vampire (1932). Dreyer's total film production is not very large, but in return
it has had some influence, especially outside Denmark's borders, e.g. on the
Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, whose films, both in form and content,
are somewhat reminiscent of Dreyer’s.
Carl Th. Dreyer
(1889-1968) was a trained journalist and as such he worked both before, during
and after his time as a film director. In 1912 he wrote his first film script
for the Scandinavian-Russian Chamber of Commerce, and in 1913 he was employed
in the Nordic Film Company's dramaturgy, where he worked until he began in 1918
as a director for the company. In 1920-32 he directed a number of films at home
and abroad, several of which are mentioned above. Thereafter mainly engaged in
journalism, until he returned in 1942 as a film director, first with short
films and soon after with feature films. From 1952 until his death, he was a
licensee for the Dagmar Theater, which, not least during his
"reign", placed great emphasis on showing quality films.
But the Film Museum
also showed classic Russian and film historically significant silent films such
as Sergei Eisenstein's Armored Cruiser Potemkin (1926), Pudovkins'
Mother (1926) and St. The Last Days of St. Petersburg (1927). Although these
films were an uncritical tribute to the bliss of Soviet communism, which
completely ignored what was really going on in the days of the revolution, the
films were so excellent cinematically that even as an anti-communist one tended
to watch away from the outrageous, cunning, but at the same time quite obsessed
very naive political propaganda.
Over time, however,
both Eisenstein and Pudovkin found it increasingly
difficult to come to terms with and live up to the demands of communist ideologues
and those in power. In his later years and later films, Eisenstein (1898-1948)
concentrated on the issue: the individual's conscience towards the state, and
this brought him into repeated conflicts with the state power, and also led to
some of his latest films being banned by the regime. This was the case with Bezhin's Enge (1937) and not
least the second part of his last epic, the masterpiece Ivan the Terrible (1st
part: 1944 and 2nd part: 1946). The latter film has been interpreted as
Eisenstein's indirect criticism and showdown with the Stalin regime.
Unlike Eisenstein, Pudovkin (1893-1953), who became a professor at the Moscow
Film Institute in 1932, sought to portray the general through the concrete and
the individual cases, giving his film a more human and individual touch. In the
1940s, like Eisenstein, he also picked up his subjects from Russia's glorious
past, but was, like his colleague, forced to stage scenes of strong polemics
against other nations and against communism's opponents in other and
predominantly capitalist countries. In 1951, Pudovkin
was accused of "wrong dispositions" but managed to escape because he
really wanted to live up to the regime's ideological demands, even though he
had his problems with it.
It must be added here
that some of the film screening series I mention here were probably only shown
during the 1947/48 season, but since I am no longer able to remember exactly
when the films were shown, I have therefore chosen to mention them in extension
of each other.
Among the Film
Museum's screening series was also one in which famous American silent films
were shown. These were some of the most significant films in international film
history, such as Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903; "The
Great Train Robbery"), the first Western film ever, as well as David Wark Griffith's dramatic film about the American Civil War,
Birth of a Nation (1915; "The Birth of a Nation"), and Intolerance
(1916; "Intolerance"), a film about the role that hatred and
intolerance have played throughout human history.
Later, relatively
recent American feature films were shown, i.a. some
that were instructed by prominent instructors, such as. John Ford (1894-1973).
He was of Irish descent and his real name was Sean O'Fearna,
and under this name he became a film photographer in Hollywood in 1915, but
when he started directing films from 1917, he called himself Jack Ford. In
several of John Ford's later films, the great cowboy movie hero of my
childhood, John Wayne (1907-1979), had the overriding lead role. His name was
actually Marion Michael Morrison, and although one would think that he could
probably have made a name for himself under the name Michael Morrison, he or
his film company chose to launch him under the pseudonym John Wayne. Originally
a graduate of the University of Southern California, he began as an extra in
Hollywood, but in 1929 starred in Raoul Walsh's Western film The Big Trail
(1930; "Against the Land of Happiness"), which must be considered his
actual debut film. In the following years, Wayne starred in a number of more or
less insignificant Western films, so-called B-films, in which he always played
the hero who, after various difficulties, overcomes all problems, so that the
good ones eventually get their reward and the bad ones well-deserved
punishment, which would often mean death. On the other hand, the hero did not
get the heroine in the end, because it would have destroyed the myth of the
lone rider who saw it as his life's work to fight lawlessness and restore law
and order in the small communities out west in the great country. It was some
of these films, my two comrades, Jørgen and Jørn, and I among others. had seen
and seen in "Fasanen", "Regina"
or "Odeon" in the years 1940-43, and before the German
occupation forces banned American films in Danish cinemas.
It was not until
1939 and with John Ford's famous and long ago classic Western film Stagecoach
("The Diligence") that John Wayne, with the role of the young cowboy,
Ringo, made his real international breakthrough as an actor one should take
seriously. Already the following year, Ford also tried to launch Wayne in a
completely different role than he used to play, namely as a sailor in the film
adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play The Long Voyage Home (1940; "The Long
Journey Home"). But despite the fact that Wayne in this film showed his
great talent as a character actor, it did not feel like he was really at home
in this type of role, or at least his regular audience at the time would not
accept him in such a serious role, which this was about. But whatever the
reason, in the following years Wayne continued primarily in the role of the
lone law enforcer in Western films. However, with a few detours to other role
subjects, such as. fighter pilot ("The Flying Tigers", 1943) or
captain of a torpedo boat ("They were Expendable", 1946).
But it was the
films "The Stagecoach" and "The Long Journey Home" that I
and the other participants got to see at one of the Film Museum's screening series.
On the same occasion I became aware of the name Dudley Nichols (1895-1960), who
was synonymous with the man who had partly written scripts or screenplays for
the two mentioned films, and who in the years 1929-57 partly wrote screenplays
for a large number of feature films, including not least for several of John
Ford's films. Dudley Nichols was educated at the University of Michigan and
became a foreign correspondent at "New York World", and in addition
he wrote novels before coming to Hollywood in 1929. Some of the first feature
films for which Nichols wrote the screenplay were the John Ford films "To
the Last Man" (1934) and "Traitor" (1935). The latter he
received an Oscar for. But Dudley Nichols made a particularly significant
contribution to film history when, in 1948, he wrote his second screenplay for
one of Eugene O'Neill's plays Mourning becomes Electra ("Sorrow Becomes
Electra"), which he also produced and directed. This in every respect
special film became a great artistic success, but it was not something for the
general cinema audience.
As far as I
remember, the film "Sorg klæder
Electra" had its Danish premiere in "Dagmar", where I had
the opportunity to revisit this very gloomy play, which I had seen on the Alléscenen in the very year we are talking about, 1946. I
do not remember, however, whether it was O’Neill’s or Jean Paul Sartre's
version of the play I saw on that occasion. But in any case, Electra was played
by one of Danish theater's excellent character actresses, Inge Hvid Møller (1906-70), who was
originally educated at the Royal Theatre's student school and had her debut
here in 1934. But then she chose to work freelance and as such was especially
associated with the Knights' Hall (Ridder Salen) and
the Alléscenen.
In the latter place,
she played the lead role in several of the great and famous plays of the time, i.a. Eliza in Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," in Jean
Anouilh's "Medea," and in the same author's "Antigone," as
well as in Berthold Brecht's "Mother Courage." Inge Hvid Møller was from 1933 a
widely used narrator in radio, just as she later worked as a director in both
theater, radio and TV. From 1966 she was program secretary in the radio's
theater and literature department with the reading material as her specialty.
Another and
probably just as important film historical event in Copenhagen in the autumn of
1946 was when the Danish Artists' Film Section was established. I no longer
remember who was actually behind the establishment of the Film Section, but it
was at least a young and then still unknown acting student at Frederiksberg
Theater, Dirch Passer, who was the institution's
secretary. The purpose was to show documentaries, experimental films and
feature films that were not normally shown in cinemas. The film section had
rented the cinema "D.S.B. - The Wide World", later called "D.S.B.s
Kino", at Copenhagen Central Station, and here films were shown to the
members on Sunday mornings, before the cinema's ordinary short film program
began at 2 p.m.
It seemed very
special to show up on Sunday morning and watch more or less serious and extreme
experimental films in exactly the cinema where you used to be entertained by a
light-hearted short film program, the highlight of which was a Skipper Horror
cartoon. Because here it was about films such as. Un chien
andalou (1928; "The Andalusian Dog") and L'age d'or (1930; "The Golden Age") by film
director Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) and the surrealist painter Salvador Dali
(1904-1989). In both of these films, the two young experimental artists took
advantage of challenging daring association clips, brutal image cuts and ruthless,
anti-aesthetic image content, and it created a tremendous stir in the films'
emergence, especially in Catholic countries. The films attacked, first and
foremost, the moral code of Catholicism and at the same time rebelled against
all kinds of authorities.
Bunuel, who worked
in Spain, France, Mexico, and even in the film mecca of the United States,
Hollywood, rebelled in particular against the social oppression of the
proletariat of the said countries and of the traditional religious view of
Jesus Christ. The latter happened with films such as Nazarin
(1959) and Viridiana (1961). The latter in particular provoked outrage and
protests from the highest Catholic authorities, something that later also
happened with the Danish painter and film director Jens Jørgen
Thorsen's film project The Love Affairs of Jesus Christ (1975; "Thorsen's
Jesus film"), which was never realized. That same year, Thorsen wrote
another film script with a Jesus motif: The Return of Jesus Christ, which
premiered in 1992.
Jens Jørgen Thorsen (1932-2000) is probably worth a fair. He was
a painter and multi-artist specializing in so-called happenings, the more
provocative the better, he seemed like the playboy he was too. But one should
not be mistaken for him, because at the same time he possessed great knowledge
of cultural and art history. However, he became especially famous - some would
say infamous - for his controversial plans for a Jesus film, in which Jesus was
portrayed as an admittedly unusual human being, but still a human being with
human urges, including as a glutton and wine drinker and not least with a sex
drive which he satisfied along with Mary Magdalene. This aroused international
outrage and accusations of blasphemy, and death threats were even made against
the poor Jens Jørgen. But just as important or sad
for him was the fact that the Danish Film Institute withdrew its commitment to
financial support for the film's production.
However, this did
not turn out to be Jens Jørgen, on the contrary, he
increasingly behaved as a provocateur, to the great indignation and anger of
the good bourgeoisie, which delighted Jens Jørgen,
because that was exactly the audience he wanted to challenge. But only more
about this later in chronological order.
Films by the French
painter, writer, playwright and film director Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) were
also shown. First and foremost, Le sang d'un poète
(1930; "Poetens Sang"), Le Baron Fantôme (1942), L'Eternel Retour
(1943; "The Eternal Longing") and La Belle et la Bête (1945:
"Beauty and The Beast "), which was the first actual feature film he
himself directed, albeit with the technical assistance of the experienced
director René Clement (1913-1996). Among Cocteau's later feature films, Orphée (1950; "The Mystery of Love") is
particularly noteworthy, a self-confessing and self-skinning work of poetry in
a strangely fascinating imagery. It was explained in that Jean Cocteau was
declared homosexual.
It was also at one
of the special performances in DSB-Kino that I saw the plastilin
animated film Barbe Bleu (1937; "Knight Bluebeard"), which was
particularly impressed by its harsh form of humor and its animated technical
use of the fact that the characters were made of the waxy or clay-like material
called plastilina. The characters were designed by
the painter René Bertrand and the film was directed by Jean Painlevé
(1902-1989), who was otherwise a documentary filmmaker specializing in
surprising, shocking and refined, but at the same time realistic nature films.
Around 1935, however, he also produced puppet films for children, and
"Knight Bluebeard" was the first in a planned series, but whether he
made more of these, I do not know.
Danish cinemas in
the post-war period
By the way, it was
astonishing how quickly the cinemas after the liberation returned to
"normal repertoire", that is to say to a repertoire that was
predominantly characterized by older and newer American films. The repertoire
contained only minimal English, French, Swedish and Danish films, and after 5
May 1945, German films were effectively banned in Danish cinemas. The former
was due to the film industry of the mentioned countries not having the capacity
to keep a permanently larger production going, and the latter was of course
connected with the German occupation of Denmark, during which the cinemas were
indirectly forced to play a certain amount of German feature films per.
quarter. But later, when the hateful feelings towards the Germans as a nation
were somewhat subdued, at least among a part of the Danish population, there
were still only quite a few well-known new German feature films in a few
cinemas. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, the German film industry was
largely non-existent, and moreover, the sad remnants of ancient glory had been
subjected to Allied control and censorship. Many German filmmakers of all
categories also had to go through a de-Nazification process, which meant that
some were forever excluded from appearing in films and theater, some were
quarantined for several years, while some were acquitted, as was the case with Veit Harlan, Kristina Söderbaum
and Werner Krauss.
One of the few new
German films that had its Danish premiere in 1946 was "The Murderers Are
Among Us", which depicts the common German's complicity in the atrocities
of National Socialism and German warfare. The film made a big impression and
meant an international breakthrough for its East German director, Wolfgang
Staudte (1906-1984). He had been working on commercials for many years when he
debuted as a feature film director with Akrobat Schö-ö-ön during the war! (1943;
"Acrobat oh!"), Starring the famous Spanish circus clown Charlie
Rivel, actually José Andreu (1896-1983). The film was shown here at home during
the occupation, but it was considered to go on the errand of the Nazis, and
therefore people looked askance at people who, like myself, dared to see it.
Charlie Rivel had through his daughter Paulina Schumann (b. 1921) a
long-standing close connection to Denmark, where he performed in Copenhagen in Cirkus Schumann, Cirkus Moreno
and in Lorry. Rivel had sons Juanito, Valentino and Charlie (the latter named
after the father, who had called himself Charlie after his great idol Charlie
Chaplin, whom he had parodied in 1927 in the circus number "Chaplin in
trapeze". But the sons performed in the 1960s in Copenhagen under the name
Charlivels, here I had the pleasure of meeting them
with mutual acquaintances Paulina Rivel was married to Albert Schumann
(1915-2001), who together with her brother, Max Schumann (1916-2004) married
Vivi Schumann, born Mikkelsen (1926 -2000), for many years during the summer
season performed circus performances in the circus buildings in Gothenburg,
Stockholm and especially in Copenhagen. The latter place ended the Schumann dynasty
as circus leaders after the 1969 season, after which the Circus Building, which
during the winter season served as a cinema under the name "World
Cinema", was taken over by Cirkus Benneweis. Paulina, Albert and Vivi and Max Schumann were
best known as horse trainers and school riders of international class and
format. whether belonging to the 5th generation of the Schumann dynasty,
remains in the circus and variety industry, Albert and Paulina's son, Benny (b.
1945) as a juggler, Max' and Vivi's children, Katja (b. 1949) and Philip (b.
1953) as school riders and horse trainers, but mainly in Sweden and abroad.
But back to German
film, where perhaps the most important German film director after the war is
Helmut Käutner (1908-1980), who after a career as a
cabaret actor and writer in 1939 made his debut as a film director. During the
war, he managed to stay away from Goebbels' propaganda ministry because his
films were probably considered light and harmless entertainment and because they
did not need more film directors for propaganda purposes than they already had
in excess. Some of Käutner's films were also shown in
Denmark during the occupation, and it was soon rumored in film circles that
here was a German director whose film was completely free of Nazi propaganda,
and which one could therefore go in and watch with a clear conscience.
Among the Käutner films shown in Danish or at least Copenhagen
cinemas during the occupation were "På gensyn, Franciska" (1941),
"Så swinger vi" (1942), "Det gådefulde smil" (1943) and
not at least "La Paloma" (1944). In the latter film, the exceedingly
sympathetic and popular Hans Albers (1891-1960) had an all-dominating lead
role, as the accordion-playing and singing sailor who always visits his tavern,
"La Paloma" (= "The White Dove") when he has leave of
absence. Hans Albers had the Danish cinema audience i.a.
could see in 1943 in the adventure film "Münchhausen",
which was then shown in the Palladium. But one of Käutner's
most significant films is probably "The Road to Madness" from 1946,
which the same year had its Danish premiere in Metropol, where I saw it myself.
It made a great impression, both in its form and its content. The film had a
framework action, as its "main character" was a people's car, and the
"action" showed a series of situations or episodes that this people
car encountered during the Hitler era and at the collapse of the regime. An
excellent German post-war film.
Of the few recent
French films that had their Danish premiere in 1946, Le Diable
au Corps ("The Devil in the Body") was shown in Metropol, where I saw
it. The male lead role as a young high school student who falls in love with
his young but married teacher was played by one of France's very best younger
actors, Gérard Philipe (1922-59), who within a few
years achieved international fame. His specialty was the portrayal of gentle,
melancholy youths and in psychologically in-depth depictions of the
inexhaustible passions of adult boys. In several of his later films, however,
he also showed more cheerful and humorous sides of his great talent.
Gérard Philipe, who appeared in both theater and film, starred
with great personal success in films such as La Beauté
du Diable (1949; "The Beauty of the
Devil"), La Ronde (1950; "The Carousel of Love"), Fanfan la Tulipe (1951; "Fanfan, The Knight of the Tulip")
and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1959; "Dangerous Connections"), which
probably became his last film before his untimely death that year.
The female lead as the
young, married teacher in "The Devil in the Body" was played by one
of French film's younger female stars, Micheline Presle
(1922-), who also occasionally excelled in film comedies, both before, during
and after the war. One will soon forget her and Gérard Philipe's
fine, sensitive and erotic interplay in "The Devil in the Body", the
outcome of which is determined in advance by the fact that the woman's man, who
is an officer, is expected home on leave one of the next few days. The high
school student is passionately obsessed with his young teacher, whose passion
he also manages to arouse, and together they experience a short-lived, mutually
violent erotic obsession, which ends abruptly when her husband returns home.
The special feature
of the film, directed by René Clair's former assistant, Claude Autant-Lara (1901-2000), was its quiet, melancholy surface,
beneath which one sensed the fierce, uncontrollable passions that foreshadowed
misfortune.
And speaking of
René Clair, actually René Chomette (1898-1981),
perhaps the greatest of all time French film directors, who up through the
1930s created a series of poetic and socially satirical film comedies that
became immensely popular with the large cinema audience. However, this also
applied to his usually sweet love stories, where two young people of different
sexes, after various difficulties, get each other in the end. René Clair's
probably most famous pre-war film, A Nous la Liberté
(1931; "Live the Freedom"), became one of the sources of inspiration
for Chaplin's equally contemporary and socially critical film comedy Modern
Times (1936; "Modern Times").
In the mid-1930s,
René Clair filmed in England, where he worked for Alexander Korda,
and here he recorded the equally satirical film comedy The Ghost goes West
(1935; "The Ghost Moves With"). With a sharp side glance to the
American newspaper king, Randolph William Hearst, who i.a.
was known for having Italian and Spanish mansions demolished and rebuilt on its
huge beachfront off the coast of California, Clair had his film satirized over
a wealthy American's purchase of a Scottish castle, which was carefully
demolished and packed in large wooden boxes, which were then transported by sea
to America. What is crucial, however, is that the demolished castle housed a
ghost who belonged to a younger man who, alive, had been a son of the castle's
owner. This role was played by the very likeable and fine English character
actor Robert Donat (1905-58), who had his film debut
in 1932, and who has since alternated between filming in England and in the
United States, more precisely in Hollywood.
Robert Donat's breakthrough film was the English thriller The
Thirty-nine Steps (1935; "The 39 Steps"), which also had the English
film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) as director. From the 1940s until
his death in 1980, Hitchcock worked in Hollywood, and it was here that he
directed the films that made him internationally famous for his nerve-wracking
and often diabolically humorous crime films. Robert Donat,
who struggled with severe and chronic asthma all his life, died at just 53
years old. He had made his theater debut in 1921 in Birmingham, and after
playing on provincial stages, he came to London in 1930, where he, among other
things. appeared on the Old Vic. His film debut took place in 1932 with the
film Men of To-morrow, but first starred in the film The Count of Monte Christo
(1934; "The Count of Monte Christo"), based on a novel by Alexandre
Dumas the Elder, published 1844- 45. The action takes place during the Napoleonic
era, and in the film Donat plays the role of the
young helmsman Edmond Dantès on the merchant ship
"Pharaon". He faces up to be named captain
and real his fiancée, Catalan Mercedes, but this is thwarted by his two rivals
who accuse him of being a dangerous Bonapartist conveying letters from the
defeated emperor who sits as a prisoner on the island of Elba , and to his
followers in France who are supposed to want to liberate and reinstate Napoleon
on the throne.
Dantés is sentenced
to placement in a sinister castle built on a rocky outcrop in the sea, which
serves as a prison for rebels and criminals. Here Dantès
is held as a prisoner for almost 20 years, as he miraculously manages to
escape. Dantès has been told by one of his fellow
prisoners, who is considered a madman, that a huge treasure is hidden on the
deserted island of Monte Christo off the coast of Italy. Dantès
manages to find the treasure, and as a rich man and under the name of the Count
of Monte Christo, he returns to and takes up residence in his hometown. No one
seems to recognize him after so many years, but one accepts him because of his
wealth and discreet demeanor. However, the only thing he thinks of is taking
revenge on his old enemies, who have all attained honor and wealth. He also
succeeds in bringing them all down.
During the war,
René Clair chose to move to Hollywood, where he had, however, conditioned
himself to continue to be allowed to make the type of film that he was best at
and would prefer. It may come as a surprise that he chose the Hollywood film
moguls' Hollywood of all, but it was probably related to the fact that one of
his great cinematic role models, Charlie Chaplin, lived and worked there. And
when Chaplin could work in Hollywood, without compromising his artistic
integrity, he, René Clair, must have been able to. However, he did not succeed
to his own satisfaction, and therefore he returned to Paris after the war and
resumed his work here, where he felt at home.
One of Clair's
perhaps most successful and best known American films is I Married a Witch
(1942; "My Wife is a Witch"), starring the newly emerged American
starlet Veronica Lake (1922-1973). She continued to record films until the late
1960s, and in 1968 she published her autobiography, "Veronica" - her
real name, however, was Constance Ockelman. In the
early 1970s, she performed in English theaters. In this context, it is
interesting to note that René Clair's "My wife is a witch" was one of
the French films that premiered in Danish or at least in Copenhagen cinemas in
1945. The film was thus on the program at Strand Teatret
on September 7, 1945.
In the Danish or at
least Copenhagen cinemas, in 1946, for example, you could also see some feature
films by the French director Julien Duvivier
(1896-1967), who worked in Hollywood during the war. Among these films were
e.g. "Lydia", 1941, "Manhattan", 1942, "The Heart of a
Nation", 1943. Around 1948 he stayed in England, where for J. Arthur Rank
he recorded "Anna Karenina" with Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson and
Kieran Moore in the lead roles. The following year he returned to Paris, where
before the war he had made some artistically significant films with i.a. Jean Gabin in the lead role.
Another French film
premiere in a Danish cinema should be mentioned here. It is about
"Carmen", 1943, which with Viviane Romance and Jean Marais in the
lead roles was shown in Metropol, where in the autumn of 1943 it
remained on the poster for several weeks. Viviane Romance, actually Pauline Ortmans (1912-1990), was originally a dancer at the
theater, but debuted in 1934 on film with Liliom, who
as previously mentioned was directed by Fritz Lang. Her films, which were
either passionate love films or pseudo-psychological melodramas, became
extremely popular with the general cinema audience, also in Denmark. Several of
her films were on the poster at home during the occupation, and especially the
female audience filled the cinema hall when one of her films was shown. It was
films such as La Bandéra (1935), We Hold Together
(1936), The Kiss of Fire (1938), Gibraltar (1938), Safia
- The Fate of a Street Girl (1938), Women's Prisons (1938), Women's List
(1944), The Road to the Penal Colonies (1945). After the war, Viviane Romance
continued her successful film career, but only a few of her post-war films were
played in Danish cinemas. However, Panic (1946), The Crossroads of Passions
(1947), Passion (1951), The Seven Deadly Sins (1952) and The Foreign
Legionnaire (1952) were shown.
Viviane Romance's
male co-star in "Carmen" was the one year younger Jean Marais
(1913-1998), who became one of French theater and film's most prominent young
actors, who since his debut in the mid-1930s worked his way up to star rating.
However, it helped a lot in his career that he got in touch early with Jean
Cocteau, whose favorite male actor he then also became, especially with his
looks and his handsome, boyish temperament and his sulking charm.
Characteristics that have clearly appealed to the gay Cocteau, who soon gave
him starring roles in some of his films, such as L'Eternel
Retour (1943; "The Eternal Longing"), La Belle et la Bête (1945;
"Beauty and the Beast"). The Beast "), Les parents terribles (1949) and not least in Orphée
(1950;" The Mystery of Love "). Jean Marais continued to record films
at least until the 1960s, but only a few of his post-war films have been shown
in Denmark. Among these are Julietta (1953), Le Comte de Monte-Christo (1954;
The Count of Monte Christo ") and" Elena and the Men "(1956).
American, English
and Swedish feature films
Among the many
older and newer American films that could be seen in Danish, including
Copenhagen, cinemas during 1946, were e.g. "The Sullivans",
1944, "North Atlantic Convoy", 1943, "It Must Be You" (Sun
Valley Serenade), 1941) "A Day in the Circus", 1938, "It Must
Not Be Tomorrow", 1941, "Sergeant York ", 1941," Love by
appointment ", 1941," Play up, Jimmy! ", 1941," Such is
life ", 1943," Young Edison ", 1940," Do you remember -?
", 1942," Manhattan " , 1942, "The Foreign Correspondent",
1940, "G-Men", 1935, "The Four Lawless", 1943, "Tom's
Adventures", 1939, "Sahara", 1943, "Tahia",
1943, "Lydia", 1941, "The Woman Who Was Behind", 1942,
"Queen of the West", 1939. But as can be seen from the years of the
films, they are predominantly slightly older American films.
However, there were
also English films in Danish cinemas in 1946, although the number of these is
not large. There were e.g. "The mysteries of the night", "3
crazy sailors", "It lies in the air", 1938, "Stolen happiness",
1939, the English-Danish "We sail at dawn". Several of these films
have not been identified and therefore no year has been given for them.
Of course, there
were also a few Swedish films on the Danish cinema repertoire in 1946, just as
there were a few Danish feature films on the repertoire. Of Swedes can be
mentioned "There is a fire burning", 1943, and "The green
elevator", 1944, while of Danish films e.g. was played "While the
Lawyer Sleeps", 1945, "The Lightning", premiere 16.5.1946 in Palladium,
"Then we meet at Tove", premiere 2.8.1946
in Palads, "I love another", premiere
13.9.1946 in Palads, and "Up with
little Martha", premiere 19.9.1946 in Saga. As the latter film
suggests, Danish film companies mainly continued to make farces, comedies and folk
comedies, which they were sure in advance that there was a relatively large
audience for.
But 1946 was also
the year when the verdicts fell on the German war criminals. The most prominent
Nazis, Adolf Hitler, Josef Goebbels and Robert Ley, each chose to commit
suicide, as it was irrevocable that Germany had lost the war and also suffered
great losses of both military and civilian life and of property and materiel.
None of them had the courage to account for the crimes they had genuinely
committed against the peoples of other nations, and not least against the Jews
and the Slavic peoples.
The following top
Nazis, whom the Allies managed to arrest and remand in custody, were sentenced
to death by hanging: Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel,
Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel
Jodel, Bormann, who had disappeared and were
therefore sentenced to absentia, and Seyss-Inquart.
Hess, Funk and
Raeder were sentenced to life imprisonment. Schirach
and Speer were sentenced to 20 years in prison, von Neurath
to 15 years, and Dönitz to 10 years, Schacht, von
Papen and Fritzche were acquitted.
After the verdict
and the night before the day the execution was scheduled, Göring
managed to commit suicide by swallowing a poison pill hidden in one of his
teeth. He had otherwise already been dismissed and sentenced to death on April
25, 1945 by the Nazi regime itself, presumably at the instigation of Hitler,
but the sentence was not executed. Hitler committed suicide in the so-called Führerbunker five days later, on April 30, 1945, by
allegedly shooting himself in the mouth with a pistol. Before that, he had by
common agreement given a deadly poison pill to his girlfriend, Eva Braun, whom
he had married a few hours earlier.
1946 was also the
year when judgments were handed down on large Danes as well as small traitors
of various categories and shades. For example, on Wednesday, October 2, 1946,
the Social Democraten announced the following in a
note inside the magazine:
On October 2, 1946
- on the third anniversary of the Nazis' action against the Danish Jews - the
Social Democraten was able to tell the following
sensational news on his front page:
UFA Director
convicted Yesterday
He got 2 Aars
City Court 21st
Chamber, Judge Ms. Karen Johnsen, treated Yesterday the case against the
48-year-old Director Anton Møller, who during the
Occupation has been director of the German Film Company UFA in Copenhagen. The
sentence came to 2 years in prison and loss of public trust for a period of 5
years. 397 days are deducted from the sentence.
Møller, who
has previously been Director of the D.S.B. Kino and Head of the Danish
Department of "Tobis" -Film, stated in the
Court that from February 1942 until the Capitulation he had worked as Rental
Director for "UFA". He had obtained the position through von Haacke, the head of UFA. His task had been to get the
"Weekly Review" played in the cinemas in connection with the daily
performances. He had, he thought, proved very accommodating to the cinema
owners and seen through fingers that the Weekly Review was not played in front
of every performance, or that pieces of the German Propaganda film were even
removed.
Møller further
explained that he had had nothing to do with UFA's Monthly Reports to Berlin.
He had, however, sometimes signed them when the boss had left, but in that case
he had not read them.
The judgment states
that Director Møller has neither acted in writing nor
in speech for German propaganda, and that his position as Head of Rental in UFA
must be regarded as civilian wage work that is not affected by the Act. On the
other hand, he has pleaded guilty through some documents which he has submitted
for the use of the German Embassy, and in which he provides
various information about the resistance of Danish cinema owners and filmmakers
to UFA's Ugerevy and their hostile attitude towards
Germany and the Occupying Power. (Quote end).
It has probably
been director Møller, some of us employees at "Fyrtøjet" had met on a couple of occasions when we
were at UFA in Nygade, to see line tests of our
animation. But I have absolutely no memory of what the man looked like or how
he behaved towards us, so he has probably been kind and accommodating, because
we were a kind of "customers" in his company. But it must be said
that the punishment he received must be considered reasonable in view of the
fact that his reports to the German embassy could possibly have had serious
consequences for the cinema owners and filmmakers about whom he provided information.
However, it could obviously not be documented that this had happened, and that
was probably why the sentence was as relatively mild as it was.
But now that we are
talking about films, it might be good to find out what in this case the
Copenhagen cinemas had on the repertoire this day, Wednesday October 2, 1946:
The
cinema repertoire on October 2, 1946 according to the Social Democraten:
Attention must be
drawn to the fact that not all Copenhagen cinema theaters announced in the
Social Democrat this day!
Alexandra: Kl.
2-4.15-7-9.15. Forb. f. Children The New American Thriller Alfred Hitchcock's
Foreign Correspondent (Amrk., 1940) Joel McCrea -
Herbert Marshall
Bella Bio: Kl.
7.10 0g 9.10 Det danske Lystspil
Then we meet at Tove '(Danish, 1946) Illona Wieselmann - Clara Østø - Poul Reichhardt
- Gull Mai Norin
Boulevard Teatret: Kl. 7,10 and 9,10 The Great Danish Color
Cartoon Fyrtøjet (Danish, 1946)
Bristol: Kl.
2-3.30-5-6.30-8 and 9.30. The new American color film The Hero from the
Canadian Police (amrk., 19??) Ex .: The swing film
Harlem on Parade
Colosseum: Kl.
7.10 and 9.10. The World's Funniest Amusement Play: The Green Elevator
(Swedish, 1944) Max Hansen - Sickan Carlsson
Enghave Bio: Kl. 7
and 9. Forb. f. Children James Cagney in G-Men (amrk.,
1935)
Grand: Kl.
2-3,50-5,6,50 The French Big Movie staged by Julien Duvivier
En Nations Hjerte (French-Amrk., 1943) Michèle Morgan - Raimu
- Jouvet. Speaker: Ch. Boyer [Charles Boyer]
Lyngbyvejens Kino: Kl. 7 and
9 Ralph Morgan - Frances Dee The President's Courier - The Conquest of the Wild
West (amrk. 1943?)
Merry: Kl.
7-8,30-10. Danish premiere New American Wild West Film De fire Lovløse (When the Daltons rode) (amrk.
1943) Kl. 4-7 Short Film Show (Hitler Lives! - Tarawa et al. - Forbidden for
Children Excerpts from the advertisement page for Amusement ads, including
cinema ads, in the Social Democraten for Wednesday,
October 2, 1946. It was still the many titles of English and especially
American films that cinemas could now, of course, freely put on the repertoire.
As can be seen from the ads above, there were only a few Danish and Swedish
films, and a single French film that was then played. Among the Danish films
was "Fyrtøjet", which was played in the Boulevard
Theater.
Metropol: Kl.
2-3.50-5.40-7.30-9.30. Week 6! Forbidden for Children The Great People of the
Season Play Carmen (French, 1943) Viviane Romance - Jean Marais
Nora: Kl.
19.10 and 21.10 The Great Color Film Tom's Fairy Tale (amrk.,
1939) After Mark Twain's Novel
Nørreport Bio: Kl.
14-15,50-17,40-19,30-21,20 The American Big Movie Sahara (amrk.,
1943) with Humphrey Bogart
Odeon: Kl. 7
and 9 Maria Montez - Jon Hall - Sabu. Tahia (amrk. 1943) A radiant color film
Palads: Kl. 2
Kl. 4 Kl. 7.15 Kl. 9.15. Week 3! I love another (Danish, 1946)
Marguerite Viby - Ebbe Rode - Ib
Schønberg
Palladium: Kl.
2 p.m. 4 Kl. 7.15 Kl. 9.15. Lydia
(French-American 1941) with Merle Oberon Director: Julien Duvivier
Platan: Kl.
7.15 and 9.15. Danish premiere The world's funniest comedy: The Green Elevator
(Swedish, 1944) Max Hansen - Sickan Carlsson. A new
Swedish recording - You will laugh like you have never laughed before!
Rialto: Kl.
7,10 and 9. 6. Week! Leslie Howard - Merle Oberon The Red Pimpernel (amrk. 1935)
Roxy: Kl.
7.15 - 9.15 - Denmark's Premiere The woman behind (amrk.,
1942) Barbara Stanwyck - Joel McCrea
Saga Teatret: Kl. 2-4-7.15-9.15. 3. Week! Up with little
Martha (Danish, 1946) Kjerulff-Schmidt - Karl Gustav Ahlefeldt –Erika Voigt Extra: The King's Birthday
Toftegaards: Kl. 7
and 9. Forb. for Children, The Mysteries of the English Great-Success Night
(Eng. 19??) A Psychological Nightmare
Valby
Theater: Kl. 7 and 9. Tommy Trinder in 3 Crazy Sailors (Eng.,
1940).
Vanløse: Kl. 7
and Kl. 9. Forbidden for Children.
The magnificent American film Queen of the West (1939) with Marlene
Dietrich and James Stewart
Vesterbro’s
Theater: Kl. 7 and 9.15. Forb. f. Children Danish premiere New
American Wild-West Film The 4 Lawless (amrk., 1943)
Randolph Scott - Kay Francis. Extra: Tarawa. Youthful stupidity
At the time of year
when people started firing again in the tiled stove, that is, around
September-October, I committed an act that I bitterly regretted many years
later. Due to my new interests and partly also new views on e.g. the film
medium in general and the cartoon medium in particular, I had come to
excessively despise and look down on what I perceived as the banal, low-comic
and meaningless entertainment cartoon, specially represented by Walt Disney's
short comic cartoons. At the same time, I had increasingly come to watch my own
little cartoon, "How the Elephant Got His Proboscis," with dislike
and displeasure. Although I had spent more than a year on it, and made quite a
few animation drawings for it, I had gradually become so overwhelmed by
dissatisfaction with my design and my animation drawings for the film that one
day I picked up all the drawings and sat down in front of it lit tile stove
which I fed with as many drawings as possible at a time. However, as there were
many hundreds of drawings, it would take its time to eradicate the entire large
stack of A4 sheets I had next to me. In addition, I also had to be careful not
to overheat the tiled stove, which burned merrily as a result of the highly
flammable paper material.
After a few hours,
the stack of paper had become significantly lower, but there was still a
considerable amount of sheets left to burn off. Mom walked nervously back and
forth in the living room, watching what I was doing. She was partly afraid that
I would get something, and partly worried about whether the tiled stove was so
heated that it went beyond its immediate surroundings. In the very cold winters
before, we had been able to experience how the wallpaper on each side of the
tiled stove had become sweaty and had come loose from the wall, just as it had
been that the paint on the door frame and the door nearby had become so hot,
that it was filled with large and small blisters. In the worst case, we could
have risked that there had been a fire in the woodwork, and then the hell - or
the fire - had been loose. So mom therefore had really good reason to be
nervous in this case.
It took me several
rounds to burn the many drawings, and since I did not dare to sit in front of
the tile stove and fire them while my father was at home, I had to wait to burn
the rest of the drawings until an opportunity arose. to it. It succeeded,
however, over a period of about 14 days, and I drew a sigh of relief as I
stuffed the very last drawings into the fire, thus erasing any trace of the
film which I had originally begun on with great desire and enthusiasm.
When Kaj Pindal came one day to hand
over a scene he had drawn for me, and heard about what had happened and that I
had completely given up the cartoon "How the elephant got its trunk",
he became even more silent than usual, but said with astonishment and a little
desperation in his voice: "How could you do that!?" Unaffected by the
situation and self-willed as I was, I replied: "I simply could no longer
bear to look at the poorly drawn characters, and the animation I am not happy
with either! Therefore!" - "Yes, then you do not need my assistance
anymore!?" found the somewhat shocked Pindal,
who did not dare to speak critically or reproachfully of my outrage. As far as
I remember, you replied: "No, I have not, at least not until I learn to
draw and animate better!" "Well, but say goodbye to you and have a
good time!", was the last thing Pindal said, as
he went out the door without further words and left the apartment. I did not
see the sympathetic and later highly acclaimed Kaj Pindal again until the late 1960s, when he was on a short
visit to his former friend and colleague Ib Steinaa, for whom I then worked.
At that time, Ib Steinaa had told me what years
later I also heard from Børge Ring and even later
from Jannik Hastrup, that Pindal had told them individually that he had thought, my
act of firing mine and partly also his great working on my film of in the tile
stove, was utterly insane and that he considered me to have been erratic at the
time of the crime!
However, I
eventually found that I actually missed drawing characters that moved, as is
the case in cartoons. But so far I have had to content myself with seeing what
other and considerably more professional and skilled, yes, almost genius,
cartoonists, as especially Walt Disney and his many co-workers performed, and
this acquaintance I could best and most easily refresh by go in and see
Metropol's annual Christmas Show.
Metropol’s
Christmas Show 1946:
This year I was therefore
again a longing guest for Metropol's Christmas Show, and as usual the program
consisted of a total of 6 short Disney cartoons, namely the following titles:
1. Window Cleaners
(1939)
2. Master Chefs
(Chef Donald, 1941)
3. The Wizard's
Suitcase (The Baggage Buster, 1941)
4. The Flesh Bone
(T-Bone for Two, 1942)
5. Over Stick and
Stone (Victory Vehicles, 1943)
6. The Trumpet
Blower (Thrombone Trouble, 1944)
As far as I am
informed, there were actually no reruns in the above film program, not even Vinduespudseren, although this film is from 1939. And the
rest of the films were produced during the war, which is why the films had not
previously been shown in Danish cinemas. All six of the cartoons mentioned were
simply excellent in every respect, and even today the films are well-deservedly
among Disney's short film classics.
The original
exhibition building on Rådhuspladsen was rented in
1894 by manufacturer Vilhelm Pacht
(1843-1912), who renamed the barracks building "Kjøbenhavns
Panorama", where he presented slides, panoramas and dioramas, as well as
"Living pictures" on the inventor Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope,
popularly called "Kukkasse”. Later, in 1896, Pacht was able to advertise and announce that he was
showing "Body-sized live images" on a large screen.
My now
long-deceased grandmother, who was born and raised in Copenhagen, once told me
that around 1896/97, when she was 12-13 years old, she had visited the place
and seen the "moving, body-sized pictures", as it was called at the
time. She was deeply fascinated by what she saw, and as an adult she became an
even more avid moviegoer, as I have told you before.
This year, 1946, a
total of 13 Danish feature films premiered, and among these was the Swedenhielms Family, which from January 13 could be seen in
World Cinema. The film, produced by ASA, Jens Dennow
and Henning Karmark, had a screenplay by Leck Fischer
based on a play by the Swedish author Hjalmar Bergman. Lau Lauritzen jun. was
responsible for the instruction, and a number of Danish theater and film big
names participated in the roles. Names such as Poul Reumert, Ebbe Rode, Beatrice Bonnesen, Maria Garland, Ib Schønberg, Mogens Wieth and others. Reumert, of
course, played the role of Swedenhielms, a role later
performed by the great Swedish actor Edvin Adolpson
in a Swedish TV series over the same play. However, I did not see this Danish
film version at the time, but instead three Danish films such as My Name is
Petersen, which premiered on September 29 in Palladium, and in which Poul Reichhardt played the role
of the returned soldier who had participated in the war on the Allies page. The
female lead was played by the adorable Helle Virkner, who later in real life married the politician Jens
Otto Krag.
The other Danish
film I saw this year was Mani, which was produced by Asger Jerrild
and Jens Henriksen at ASA Film Studio, and which had a script by Per Buckhøj, Asger Jerrild and Jens
Henriksen in collaboration with chief physician Georg K. Stürup
and the author Soya, whose book the film was based on. For the instruction was
the royal. stage director Holger Gabrielsen and Jens
Henriksen, and the film premiered on October 27 in Dagmar. The film is about a
school-class fat boy who ends up as a psychopath, and this role was masterfully
played by Ib Schønberg. In
addition, several of Danish theater and film's big names participated, such as
Maria Garland, Johannes Meyer, Angelo Bruun, Preben Neergaard, Asbjørn Andersen, Per Buckhøj and
others. The film director mentioned above, Jens Henriksen, I later got to know
and collaborate on a couple of films, which included cartoon elements.
The third Danish
film I saw in 1947 was The Soldier and Jenny, which premiered on October 30 in Saga,
and which was based on Soya's play "Fragments of a Pattern". The film
was produced by Johan Jacobsen at Saga Studio, and he was also responsible for
both its screenplay and instruction. The plot revolves around two of the
everyday outcasts and their relationship to the conventional world, and the male
lead role as the soldier was masterfully played by Poul
Reichhardt and the female lead role as Jenny just as
fine and touching by Bodil Kjer.
In addition, several well-known Danish actors participated, such as Elith Pio, Karin Nellemose,
Johannes Meyer, Maria Garland, Sigfred Johansen,
Gunnar Lauring and others.
In 1947, Nordisk
Film only came forward with two feature films, namely Take What You Want (- -
and pay what it costs!), Which premiered on 5 September in Palads.
The film was scripted by Mårten Edlund
and Flemming Lynge freely
after the former's novel. The instruction was given by Ole Palsbo,
one of Danish film's most serious and socially engaged film directors, and
again featured a number of Danish theater and film's most prominent names, such
as Ebbe Rode, Agnes Thorberg-Wieth
(mother of Mogens Wieth), Ib Schønberg, Ellen Gottschalch, Erni Arneson, Helle Virkner, Vera Gebuhr, et al.
Ole Palsbo was a journalist at B.T. 1931-32, film critic at Nationaltidende 1933-40, film critic and theater critic at Ekstra-Bladet 1945-48, film director from 1941 and stage
director from 1943. His first feature film was the psychological crime film
Nat-Ekspressen (P903), which had a screenplay by the
author Emil Bønnelycke, edited by Svend
Methling and Ole Palsbo.
The film had premiered on October 1, 1942 in World Cinema, and in a
significant lead role was seen Carl Alstrup
(1877-1942), who at the time was a prominent actor in the revue genre.
"The Night Express" became his last film, dying on October 2, 1942,
the day after the film's premiere. He had appeared in films since 1908, i.e. in
the silent film era, but did not record more than a total of 7 tone feature
films during his long career.
The text continues in the 11th section.