The Finnish cinema has a long history, with the first public screenings starting almost as early as modern motion picture technology was invented (the first screening in the world was in 1895, and in Finland in 1896). It took over a decade before the first Finnish film was produced and screened in 1907. After these first steps of Finnish cinema, the progress was very slow. After 1907 there were two periods (1909–1911 and 1917–1918) when no Finnish films were produced. This was partly caused by the political situation, as Finland held a status as an autonomous part of the Russian Empire and was thus influenced by the worldwide political situation.
In 1917 Finland became an independent country and in 1918 there was a civil war. After the political situation had stabilized, Finnish society and its cultural life began to develop. This was very clear with cinematic arts. More films were produced and they became an important part of Finnish society. The culmination of this development came soon after the silent era, around the 1940s and 1950s, when three major studios were producing films and competing for the market. When society changed in the 1960s, partly because of political trends and partly because of new forms of entertainment, like television, the appeal of films was threatened, practically all studios were closed, and films became political and too artistic for the masses, as commercial production was considered a thing of the past and distasteful. However, a few filmmakers were opposed to this development, and kept producing popular films that were bashed by the critics but loved by the people.
The most significant Finnish films include The Unknown Soldier, directed by Edvin Laine in 1955, which is shown on television every Independence Day.YLE: Finnish Independence Day – Galas, Protests & War Memories Here, Beneath the North Star from 1968, also directed by Laine, which includes the Finnish Civil War from the perspective of the Red Guards, is also one of the most significant works in Finnish cinematic history.Agreeing on History: Adaptation as Restorative Truth in Finnish Reconciliation A 1960 crime comedy film Inspector Palmu's Mistake, directed by Matti Kassila, was voted in 2012 the best Finnish film of all time by Finnish film critics and journalists.
A revival in Finnish cinema came in the 1990s, which was partly influenced by the new generation of filmmakers bringing in new ideas, and partly because commercial success was no longer considered to be "non-artistic," thus commercial film projects started to receive support from governmental funds. In the 2000s the Finnish cinema is alive and well, with some films and filmmakers gaining global success and many films receiving a good response from audiences and critics. Today, around 15–20 Finnish full-length feature films are produced every year, and the Finnish cinema is gaining new forms from global influence, such as action and wuxia. The 2022 action war film Sisu, directed by Jalmari Helander, is currently the most successful Finnish film of all time in the United States at the box office, with revenues of over $7 million.
History
1896–1920: Before Independence The Lumière company screened the first moving images at Helsinki in 1896, but it wasn't until 1904 that the first films were actually filmed in Finland. It is unknown who made the first film (called Novelty from Helsinki: School youth at break), but it was shown by American Bioscope in December. The first Finnish film company, Atelier Apollo, was founded in 1906 by engineer K. E. Ståhlberg. It produced mainly documentary shorts, but also the first Finnish feature film, The Moonshiners (1907). From the very beginning, Finnish film production was centered to the country's capital, although for few years starting from 1907 there was a noteworthy company Oy Maat ja Kansat producing short documentaries in Tampere.
The Moonshiners was directed by Teuvo Puro, who was also in charge of directing the first full-length Finnish feature, Sylvi, based on a play by Minna Canth. The film was shot in 1911 with two other full-length literature adaptations, but it didn't premiere until 1913. The filmmakers didn't have enough money to send films to the nearest laboratory in Copenhagen at once, so the material remained undeveloped too long, and two out of three films were ruined.
The years following Sylvi saw the formation of the first active feature film company, Hjalmar V. Pohjanheimo's Lyyra-Filmi, which produced both short farces and "art films". There was also an attempt to create larger-scale film production by Erik Estlander, who build a studio with glass walls and roof in Helsinki in 1916. At the end of the same year the Russian officials forbid all filming activity in Finland, so nothing much was made anymore before the country's independence in 1917.
The Finnish film industry of the first two decades of the 20th century was never even near the creativity or the productiveness of its Scandinavian neighbours, Sweden and Denmark – one might even say that it there was barely no industry or production at all. In addition, most of the footage filmed before independence is lost. Of feature films, only thirteen minutes of Sylvi still remains.
1920–1930: The Silent Years
Suomi-Filmi It wasn't until the 1920s before regular film production started, thanks to a successful company called Suomi-Filmi (founded under the name Suomen Filmikuvaamo in 1919) and its creative leader Erkki Karu. He also directed the most important films of the era and was the prime figure of Finnish cinema before his early death in 1935. His The Village Shoemakers (1923) is the essential silent masterpiece, a freshly told folk comedy after Aleksis Kivi's play with mildly experimental camerawork by German . Other notable films by Karu include: The Logroller's Bride (1923), with superb cinematography by Jäger and Oscar Lindelöf, and also the first Finnish film distributed widely abroad; When Father Has Toothache (1923), a short and surrealistic farce; and Our Boys (1929), a patriotisic forerunner of many military farces.
Audiences of the agricultural country were affected by Suomi-Filmi's rural subjects. Dealing with deeply national countryside stories remained as company's policy through the silent era. Occasionally there were some attempts to make more urban, or more "European" films like Karu's Summery Fairytale (1925), but the public stayed away.
Another important director at Suomi-Filmi was the aforementioned Puro, who made the company's first feature Olli's Years of Apprenticeship(1920) and one of the few Finnish horror films, Evil Spells (1927). An interesting oddity of the last two silent years was Carl von Haartman, a soldier and an adventurer, who had worked as a military advisor in Hollywood. Because of this he was considered capable of directing films. His two upper-class spy dramas, The Supreme Victory (1929) and Mirage (1930), were quite passable, but didn't attract the public.
Other companies Suomi-Filmi heavily dominated the Finnish film production in the 1920s. The company produced 23 out of 37 full-length feature films made between 1919–1930. Other companies (that appeared occasionally) seemed to vanish from Suomi-Filmi's and Erkki Karu's way after producing one or two films. The most important of these alternative production companies appeared during the latter half of the decade.
The German cinematographer Jäger left Suomi-Filmi, and formed his own company Komedia-Filmi. It linked with a global film trust (Ufanamet), which at the time possessed most of the film distribution of Finland, thus being a great threat to Suomi-Filmi. Suomi-Filmi defended itself with national values, accusing Komedia-Filmi and Ufanamet for being foreign invaders. Luckily for Suomi-Filmi, both companies proved to be unsuccessful. Komedia-Filmi only made two films, of which the latter one, On the Highway of Life (1927, directed by Jäger and Ragnar Hartwall) is an interesting attempt to make some kind of a modern comedy.
In 1929 the minor production company Fennica released its first two films, both directed by Valentin Vaala, who later become one of the prominent directors of the Golden Age of Finnish cinema. Vaala was 17 years old when production started on the first film, Dark Eyes, while its leading actor Theodor Tugai (later known as Teuvo Tulio) was 14. Dark Eyes and it remake The Gypsy Charmer were melodramtic films incorporating elements of orientalist style and themes. Dark Eyes in now considered a lost film. According to accounts of its production, the filmmakers destroyed the film's sole surviving negative by throwing it into the sea, because they considered the remake superior.
There were also enterprises to produce films outside the capital, but the films made in Viipuri and Oulu were too primitive to even premiere at Helsinki. No Tears at the Fair (1927) and The Man of Snowbound Forests (1928), two now lost films produced in Tampere by Aquila-Suomi and directed by Uuno Eskola were better attempts according to their contemporaries. Nothing permanent production was left in Tampere, but one of Aquila's producers, painter Kalle Kaarna, proved to be a gifted director in his own right. His first film With the Blade of a Sword (1928) was boldly advertised as a neutral story about the painful civil war of 1918, and his second film, A Song about the Heroism of Labour (1929) introduced (although quite conventionally) a new kind of proletarian hero to the public. Neither of these films have survived to today.
1931–1933: The Coming of Sound
The first experiments with sound were done by Lahyn-Filmi, a provincial company operating in Turku. The first full-length sound film with song and talk was Lahyn's Say It in Finnish (1931), directed by company's leader Yrjö Nyberg (later Norta). This lost film was more a collection of musical revue numbers than a feature.
Suomi-Filmi transformed its production from silent to sound films during the same year. The first Finnish film with soundtrack was the company's Dressed Like Adam and a Bit Like Eve Too (1931), based on a popular play by Agapetus (pseudonym of Yrjö Soini). There was only music and some sound effects on the soundtrack, so the company's first true sound film was Karu's The Lumberjack's Bride (1931), another rural drama.
1934–1939: The Golden Age
The studio system In 1933, Karu was ousted from Suomi-Filmi. He retaliated by founding a new film studio, called Suomen Filmiteollisuus, which started to use the initials SF in its logo. This company saw greater success than previous competitors of Suomi-Filmi, and following several successful comedies directed by Karu, it had grown to be as significant as its rival.
The competition between the two companies proved to be beneficial for the growth of the industry. By the end of the decade, there were approximately twenty full-length features being made every year. As the quality of productions increased and the field of subjects expanded, so did the popularity of domestic films. With its own stars and producers, the Finnish film industry began to resemble a national miniature of Hollywood. The two major studios saw major successes in this period, as did some smaller production companies.
Sound had increased the public's eagerness to see domestic films. The great breakthrough for Finnish talkies came with The Foreman of Siltala Farm (1934), a well-recorded comedy by Suomi-Filmi, that was seen by over 900 000 viewers.
Suomi-Filmi
Erkki Karu was instantly replaced with Risto Orko as the head of company, a place he held until the 1990s (although this was long after the company had stopped movie-making). Orko had directed The Foreman of Siltala Farm, and he returned to directing a few times since, most notably with two historical and patriotic dramas at the end of the decade: Soldier's Bride (1938) and Activists (1939). Most of his films as a director remain forgettable.