Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema
288
Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema
288eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Each interview is preceded by a photograph of the director, biographical information, and a filmography. Frame enlargements are used throughout to help clarify particular points of discussion and the book as a whole is contextualised by an informative general introduction. A valuable addition to the growing library of books on Scandinavian film, national cinema and minority cinema.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781841508306 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2001 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Ib Bondebjerg is professor of film and media studies, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, and was the founder and director of the Centre for Modern European Studies (2008-20011). From 2000 to 2009 he was the editor of Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook and he is part of the advisory board of Studies in Documentary Film and Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. His main research area is European film and media culture and documentary genres. He was co-director of the ESF Research project Changing Media - Changing Europe (2000-2005) and is co-director of the HERA project, Mediating Cultural Encounters Through European Screens (MeCETES, 2013-216). His most recent publications are Media, Democracy and European Culture (2008, co-editor and contributor), Narratives of Reality: The History of the Danish Television Documentary (2008, in Danish), Images of Reality: The Modern Danish Film Documentary (2012, in Danish), Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization (2014) and Danish Directors 3: Dialogues on the New Danish Documentary Cinema (co-editor, 2014).
Mette Hjort is chair professor of humanities and dean of arts at Hong Kong Baptist University, affiliate professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and visiting professor of creative industries at the University of South Wales. Her current research interests include film and public value, moving images in the context of health and well-being and talent development on a North/South basis. Her research on the last theme is described in her contribution to African Cinema and Human Rights (Indiana University Press, 2019), which she co-edited with Eva Jørholt.
Read an Excerpt
The Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema
By Mette Hjort, Ib Bondebjerg
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2000 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-830-6
CHAPTER 1
Gabriel Axel
1918–
Gabriel Axel was originally trained at the Royal Danish Theatre School. Prior to his breakthrough as a film and TV director, he worked as an actor in both France and Denmark. He is one of the most productive directors of the early period of Danish TV theatre, having produced some 50 televised plays between 1951 and 1970. These productions include both classical and modern plays, as well as the first Danish TV series, Rainy Weather and No Money (Regnvejr og ingen penge, 1965). Axel's contribution as a film director is varied and embraces films in a realistic vein, erotic comedies, popular comedies, and epics based on classic works of literature. His first feature film, Nothing but Trouble (Altid ballade, 1955), which focuses on a working class family, is one of the best Danish realist films of the 1950s. Golden Mountains (Guld og grønne skove, 1958) is a subtle social satire about provincial Danes' encounter with the modern world during the post-war period, and is one of the finest Danish comedies of the 1950s. Crazy Paradise (Det tossede paradis, 1962) was the first in a series of erotic comedies that was to establish Axel internationally. The sheer range of Axel's creative talent is evident in the modernistic and symbolic Paradise and Back (Paradis retur, 1964). Axel's first major attempt at a historical epic, The Red Mantle (Den røde kappe, 1967), did poorly at the Danish box office and was almost uniformly dismissed by the Danish critics. Interestingly, the film's reception was quite different elsewhere in the world. In 1977 the Danish Broadcasting Corporation informed Axel that they had no use for his talents during the upcoming year. As a result he moved to France where he went on to enjoy a highly successful career in French TV. He was, for example, awarded the prestigious Balzac prize for The Night Watch (La Ronde de nuit, 1977). In 1987 he made a strong comeback in Danish film with his adaptation of Karen Blixen's short story, Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud) which was the first Danish film ever to win an Oscar as Best Foreign Film. The road movie, Christian (1989), was poorly received, as was The Prince of Jutland (Prinsen af Jylland, 1994), which draws on Saxo Grammaticus' account of Amled and features established English-speaking actors in the leading roles.
Feature films
1955, Nothing but Trouble (Altid ballade)
1957, AWoman not Wanted (En kvinde er overflødig)
1958, Golden Mountains (Guld og grønne skove)
1959, My Helen (Helle for Helene)
1960, Flemming and Kvik (Flemming og Kvik)
1962, Crazy Paradise (Det tossede paradis)
1962, Oskar 1963, But We're Fine (Vi har det jo dejligt)
1963, Three Girls in Paris (Tre piger i Paris)
1964, Paradise and Back (Paradis retur)
1967, The Red Mantle (Den røde kappe)
1968, Danish Blue (Det kære legetøj)
1970, Amour
1971, With Love (Med kærlig hilsen)
1975, The Gyldenkål Family (Familien Gyldenkål)
1976, The Gyldenkål Family Breaks the Bank (Familien Gyldenkål sprænger banken)
1977, Going for Broke (Alt på et bræt)
1987, Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud)
1989, Christian
1994, The Prince of Jutland (Prinsen af Jylland)
2000, Laïla the Pure (Laïla Den Rene)
TV productions, Denmark (from a total of 49)
1951, Death (Døden)
1953, Bear (En bjørn)
1954, A Celebration (En mindefest)
1955, AWoman is Superfluous (En kvinde er overflødig)
1956, Miss Julie (Frøken Julie)
1957, Forced to Wed (Det tvungne giftermål)
1960, The Eternal Husband (Den evige ægtemand)
1965, As They Like It (Retten på vrangen)
1965 Rainy Weather and No Money (Regnvejr og ingen penge, episodes 1–4)
TV productions, France
1977, A Crime of Our Times (Un Crime de notre temps)
1977, The Night Watch (La Ronde de nuit)
1979, Curé de Tours (Le Curé de Tours)
1979, The Rooster (Le Coq de Bruyère)
1979, The Fishing Net Maid (La Ramendeuse)
1981, Antoine and Julie (Antoine et Julie)
1981, The Children's Blue Bird (L'Oiseau bleu)
1984, Heaven's Columns (Les Colonnes du ciel, episodes 1–5)
Acting roles
1953, We Who Go the Kitchen Route (Vi som går køkkenvejen, directed by Erik Balling)
1954, Royal Visit (Kongeligt besøg, directed by Erik Balling)
1954, The Joys of Sharing (Det er så yndigt at følges ad, directed by Torben Anton Svendsen)
1954, The Sky is Blue (Himlen er blå, directed by Svend Aage Lorentz)
1954, Jan Goes to the Movies (Jan går til filmen, directed by Torben Anton Svendsen and John Hilbert)
1954, Karen, Maren and Mette (Karen, Maren og Mette, directed by John Hilbert)
1955, The Bride from Dragstrup (Bruden fra Dragstrup, directed by Annelise Reenberg)
1955, The Day Came When (Der kom en dag, directed by Sven Methling)
1956, Puss in the Corner (Kispus, directed by Erik Balling)
1958, Officer Karlsen (Styrmand Karlsen, directed by Annelise Reenberg)
1961, Peter's Baby (Peters baby, directed by Annelise Reenberg)
1962, He, She, Dirch and Dario (Han, hun, Dirch og Dario, directed by Annelise Reenberg)
1963, Three Girls in Paris (Tre piger i Paris, directed by Gabriel Axel)
1965, A Friend in Need of Housing (En ven i bolignøden, directed by Annelise Reenberg)
1966, Virtue Goes Overboard (Dyden går amok, directed by Sven Methling)
1967, I, a Nobleman (Jeg – en marki, directed by Mac Ahlberg and Peer Guldbrandsen)
1971, With Love (Med kærlig hilsen, directed by Gabriel Axel)
1972, Up and Coming (Nu går den på Dagmar, directed by Henning Ørnbak)
1976, The Gyldenkål Family Breaks the Bank (Familien Gyldenkål sprænger banken, directed by Gabriel Axel)
1977, Going for Broke (Alt på et bræt, directed by Gabriel Axel)
Bondebjerg: You were trained at the Royal Danish Theatre School, and you were initially much more oriented towards theatre than film. You were employed in the Theatre Department at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation from 1951 to 1968, where you directed no fewer than fifty performances. What, for you, is the key difference between theatre, TV and film, and why did film and TV win out over the 'real' theatre in your case?
Axel: I don't feel that film and TV won out over theatre in my career. On the contrary. I've really used what I learnt through theatre in my film and TV work, namely, how to direct actors. When you've been an actor yourself, you know how actors feel. Most actors enjoy talking to a director who, with precision and without shouting, can identify what was good and bad about a given performance. Even stars and great actors like Michel Bouquet are grateful for incisive criticism. Actually, the more severe you are, the happier they are. So I don't know what I would have done without my training in theatre. Actors perform best if you, with just a few words, can help them to find the right feeling and expression. Louis Jouvet, my great teacher, said that the actor's great virtue is that he or she doesn't have to think, but rather feel and sense. If each of the actors in an ensemble begins to 'think' and interpret his role, then it becomes impossible to create a uniform tone and style. Take Stéphane Audran. She only needs a few words. As we were getting ready to shoot the scene in Babette's Feast where she's been down to the boat to collect her ingredients for her feast and is walking back through the village, she asked me what she should be like and what she should be feeling. 'Am I happy?' she asked. 'No, Stéphane, you can't be happy before you create your feast, but you are "serene" because you have all the ingredients you need in order to practise your art.' In her case that one word, serene, sufficed for an entire series of shots, from her walking through the village virtually to the conclusion of the dinner. If you give the actors the right words at the right moment, and if you establish a sense of trust, then they feel secure.
Bondebjerg: How did you end up in TV theatre and what, for you, is the key difference between TV and film?
Axel: It was very exciting. Jens Frederik Lawaetz had invited me and some other people to a meeting in the Radio House. There were about thirty of us, and we were told that TV would soon become a reality. Lawaetz then handed everyone a copy of Politiken and Berlingske Tidende and asked us to underline something that was of interest to us, for example, music, news, theatre, children, and so on. He collected his newspapers the following week, and on the basis of our indications he then decided who would be in the Drama Department, the Music Department, the News and Current Affairs Department, the Children's Department, and so on. I was placed in the Theatre Department and you can't possibly imagine what the conditions were like during those first years, or how primitive the techniques were. It was a unique experience, to say the least!
But the differences between TV and film are probably not that great. If you're going to tell a story within the small frame provided by TV, you compose the image differently. A striking difference is that you're more inclined to use close-ups in TV, but that's really the main one. There are also some technical differences. In the case of TV, the pace has to be really fast. A video camera is capable of a lot, and you can cut from one thing to the next while in the studio. You work without any clear light sources and you end up with a diffused light that lacks atmosphere. As a result it's tempting to overuse the zoom. That is, you tend to pull the actors or objects forwards and the entire background as well. A film camera that is on tracks can move towards the actor, and that makes for an entirely different kind of effect. Then there's the difference in format: the small screen versus the large screen. This has an impact on the aesthetics of the two media and their reception.
Bondebjerg:Nothing but Trouble, your first feature film, is based on a script by Leck Fischer, who drew on a Norwegian film from 1954 by Edith Calmar. Nothing but Trouble is, it seems to me, still one of your best films. It's also a very unusual film in the context of Danish film culture of the 1950s, for its depiction of a working class family is unsentimental, realistic, and in no way moralistic. Nothing but Trouble deals with the need for solidarity and love during a difficult period prior to the emergence of the welfare state. In this sense its message resembles that of many of your other films. What, exactly, is the origin of this film, and how do you see it today?
Axel: As a result of my work for TV, film companies like ASA and Nordisk started contacting me. Nordisk invited me to make Nothing but Trouble. I had children myself, including a little five year old boy, my first child, and parts of the film were of course shot from a child's point of view. In that film we also tried to create the mood and atmosphere that neo-realism, and especially de Sica, had evoked. In a way we also anticipated some of the things that the Dogme films are doing today. I told my cameraman that we needed what I called 'a little French sloppiness.' He'd give the camera a shove every now and again, so things would be less polished here and there. And one of the things we did in order, for example, to recreate the boy's perspective was to place the camera on the same level as his tricycle. We tried to recreate the authentic atmosphere of the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen. We shot the film in an apartment that was one metre from the train tracks, because we really wanted people to be able to feel the atmosphere. The atmosphere in a film stems from the hundreds of things that you can't see, but which you'd miss if they weren't there. Dreyer's films are saturated with atmosphere, not because there seem to be a lot of things in the image, but because nothing distracts from what's essential. At the same time it's more gratifying to try to create a realistic atmosphere in a black and white film. You avoid the danger of producing something resembling a postcard, which is the effect that colour can have. In order to foster the realism I was after, I'd use authentic experiences from my daily life in the scenes involving, for example, the mother and the little boy. At one point he's on the potty and he shouts: 'Mummy, I'm finished, it was just a fart.' My son had said precisely that earlier that morning and I simply used the sentence. It was wonderful and very inspiring to work with the little fellow. He was a real find, and Sigrid Horne Rasmussen was also a real find for her role. She was able to express the warmth and feelings of that hard-pressed working class wife. And Jørn Jeppesen made for a fine policeman. I miss him.
Bondebjerg: Many of your films belong to the genre that is often rather condescendingly referred to as 'Danish popular comedy',* but within that genre you've produced a number of films that have met with success at the box office and at times with critics. Your third feature film, Golden Mountains, received several international awards and is at this point acknowledged to be one of the finest examples of the genre in question. What, for you, was the original point of this story, and how would you describe the film's narrative form and style in relation to both Danish and international traditions of comedy?
Axel: One of the film's themes is, of course, the encounter between Danish and American culture. The film is about these islanders who think they've found oil. Then the Americans show up with their wealth and their Coca Cola and suddenly everyone is supposed to march to their drum. The film exploits the comic possibilities that are implicit in that kind of situation. The film was made during the Marshall-plan years when American mass culture was really making inroads in Denmark. The film reflects this reality. Golden Mountains is about two fathers who are opposed to an untraditional love affair. The film is about prejudice, rivalry and power struggles, and the fact that the story unfolds in a small island society involving two communities who feel superior to one another really helps to underscore these phenomena. A girl from Ærø doesn't marry a boy from Omø, and fishermen and peasants are very different kinds of people. I wanted to depict the particular atmosphere that exists in that kind of island community because it crystallises and foregrounds certain common human traits. I don't think there's anything like a viable formula for comedy in a Danish or international vein. I simply tried to find the satirical and amusing tone in Johannes Allen's script.
Bondebjerg: I'd like to pursue the discussion of Danish popular comedy. The Gyldenkål Family films, which you made in the 1970s, did fairly well at the box office. The tone and style of these films are rather different, however, for the satire is a lot coarser, it seems to me, than in Golden Mountains. Were the films an attempt to find a formula that was just as viable as that of the Olsen Gang films, or did you have other models in mind? How would you yourself characterise these films' style and mode of narration?
Axel: I'd almost say that if there's any commedia dell'arte anywhere in Danish film, it's in the Olsen Gang comedies. They established a norm for acting, and both the audience and the producers expect everyone who's trying to make similar comedies to meet it. You can't get Kirsten Walther, who plays Yvonne in the Olsen Gang films, to budge one inch. Kirsten Walther and all the other actors in the two Gyldenkål Family films came straight from the Olsen Gang films, so I didn't have much choice but to let them keep on acting in that style, which was what everyone expected them to do anyway. I said to my cinematographer, Henning Kristiansen: 'You know, it's not Shakespeare, but we're going to put as much effort into it as we would if it was.' You have to try to maintain a certain professional standard, even in those kinds of films, and in a sense you need the same techniques whether you're dealing with Gyldenkål or Hamlet. It's, of course, true that Golden Mountains has its own tone, style and atmosphere. Somebody once pointed out that it was a bit like the films of the Czech new wave, like Milos Forman's early films, for example. But I didn't consciously look to any other films while making it. But the Gyldenkål Family films emphasise a fairly coarse satire whereas Golden Mountains in many ways is quite poetic. The former are almost a parody of the genre. The producer said we needed to come up with something that could compete with the Olsen Gang. But we only made two films based on the concept: The Gyldenkål Family and The Gyldenkål Family Breaks the Bank. By then we'd pretty much exhausted the story.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema by Mette Hjort, Ib Bondebjerg. Copyright © 2000 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Figures,Acknowledgements,
Dedication,
Introductions,
Preface,
David Bordwell (University of Wisconsin, Madison),
Danish Cinema: A Small Nation in a Global Culture,
Mette Hjort and Ib Bondebjerg,
Four Generations of Danish Directors,
Ib Bondebjerg and Mette Hjort,
Interviews,
1. Gabriel Axel,
2. Henning Carlsen,
3. Jørgen Leth,
4. Christian Braad Thomsen,
5. Jytte Rex,
6. Erik Clausen,
7. Anders Refn,
8. Helle Ryslinge,
9. Nils Malmros,
10. Morten Arnfred,
11. Søren Kragh-Jacobsen,
12. Bille August,
13. Jon Bang Carlsen,
14. Lars von Trier Open Film City by Lars von Trier,
15. Ole Bornedal,
16. Susanne Bier,
17. Jonas Elmer,
18. Lotte Svendsen,
19. Thomas Vinterberg,
Glossary,
Bibliography,