Mirjami Kuosmanen

The fifth and last film of Nyrki Tapiovaara (1911–40), released posthumously after his tragically premature death during the last days of the Winter War, and finished by one of the film’s actors, Hugo Hytönen, with some help from Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen, future collaborators on The White Reindeer. As with Tapiovaara’s earlier films Stolen Death (1938) and Kaksi Vihtoria (“Two Henpecked Husbands”, 1939), Blomberg was the film’s producer and cinematographer, while Kuosmanen had one of her first major roles in the film. The film was an adaptation of recent Nobel laureate F. E. Sillanpää’s 1932 novel and, along with Teuvo Tulio’s rural melodramas of the late ’30s (including one Sillanpää adaptation, the now-lost Nuorena nukkunut), one of the crucial trope-setters for Finnish cinema in the years to come, with its depictions of breathtaking landscapes, love on the hayfield, and drunken brawls at country dances.Read More »

A precursor of sorts to The White Reindeer (1952), featuring the same female lead, Mirjami Kuosmanen, and the same cinematographer, Erik Blomberg, who was Kuosmanen’s husband and went on to direct as well as shoot the later film. Disappointment in this film was one of the reasons that led Blomberg and Kuosmanen to make The White Reindeer as an independent production. The film’s nominal producer was Michael Powell, but in fact the production was supervised by John Seabourne (for some reason billed “Jussi” Seabourne in the opening credits), a close friend of Powell’s and the editor of many of the Powell & Pressburger classics of the 1940s. Read More »

Blending the vampire and werewolf mythology into a fascinatingly unique and inspired synthesis which also adds elements from pre-Christian folklore, filmmaker Erik Blomberg’s simple, lyrical parable about how all actions have consequences has the immediacy, intimacy and potency of an eloquently spun scary campfire yarn. Skillfully directed, produced, edited, co-written and shot in gorgeous monochromatic black and white by Blomberg, who began photographing movies back in the 30’s and made only four other films before spending the rest of his career doing documentaries for television, this plainly done and elegantly understated debut feature benefits greatly from not only its powerfully direct and unpretentious story, but also from its highly unusual and intriguing period setting.Read More »