[SOUND] [MUSIC] [COUGH] [MUSIC] [NOISE]. In a sense, Hunger is a quintessential Scandinavian new wave film. It not only combines realist and modernist tendencies, the circumstances of its production is also in many ways Scandinavian, more than simply national. The script was adopted by Henning Carlsen and the Danish modernist writer Peter Seeberg from a 1890 novel by the Norwegian Nobel Prize winner Knut Hapsun, Hamsun, sorry. It was directed by Henning Carlsen, and with Swedish Per Oscarson in the lead role for which he won the Bodil. Likewise, it was produced in collaboration between the director's own Henning Carlsen Film in Denmark, Studio ABC Norway, and in Sweden Sandrew Film and Theater AB and the Swedish Filminstitute. Also the cast was a mixture of nationality that all spoke in their own national tongue. So even the dialogue was a mix of Scandinavian languages. In this way, new wave cinema also had some importance to inspire lasting features Scandinavian cinemas in the form of co-productions, which is one of the options small nations have to enlarge funding and reach larger audiences. I think it's safe to say that the Scandinavian new waves embraced three different kinds of films. First there was a renewal of old genres in Scandinavian cinemas, such as the Folk Comedy, that became modernized. For example, Wiederberg also made comedies somehow more connected to a sense of contemporary life than earlier national comedy forms. Second, there were a series of realist films often shot in a documentary-like style. Again, Wiederberg can be mentioned, but also Jan Troell and many Danish film directors, such as Lene and Sven Gronnelykke and Christian Braad Thomsen. And in the mid 70s, also Anja Breien as essential female director in Norwegian cinema. Third, there were modernist and often self-reflexive films with Jean Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni as the main sources of inspiration. In Norway, Pal Lokkeberg is the central film director that represents this tendency. In Denmark, the Director Palle Kjaerulff-Schmidt and the poet and writer Klaus Rifbjerg, together made a series of films from the late 50s and up through the 60s that can exemplify those three tendencies. Kjaeulff-Schmidt and Rifbjerg's De sjove ar I Years of Un from 1959, is an early example of a new treatment of old for its ironic and self-reflexive version of the coming of age youth comedy. It combined comedy conventions with the more loose and multi-layered form of an example storytelling. Actually, another Danish director writer did something along the same lines with Harry and kammertjeneren. Harry and The Butler, from 1961. A film by director Bent Christnesen and writer Leif Panduro, that combined folk comedy with absurd stylization. Leif Panduro was to become a central writer of serious but popular TV plays directed by Kjaerulff-schmidt, often combining realism and absurdism. In the cinema, however, Kjaerulff-Schmidt continued working with Klaus Rifbjerg. Partly in Weekend, and later with There Once Was a War, Der var engang en krig, they favored a realist approach with few modernist elements. And these films are among the most convincing ones. Weekend was programmatic for the Danish New Wave Cinema, it featured three young couples and a single guy during a weekend stay in a summer cottage. It is both an example narrative and a kammerspiel it follows a kind of negative dramaturgy. As the weekend goes along, everybody is disillusioned, through self-reflexive conversations and free sex, and lack of commitment in life through heavy drinking and promiscuous actions. By verbal and physical aggression, and finally through the experience of a kind of collective collapse. In Sweden, Ingmar Bergman saw it and liked the film, even though his praise had his typical irony, it is one of the best films I have seen. What the hell, it doesn't matter that they have no idea where to place the camera. In any case, they got something on the film, something important. That was Bergman. In a sense, we can present all the themes that had become the hallmark of modern life in Western societies. Humans are given the freedom to create their own life, but this freedom leads to a feeling of deep alienation. The paradox was that even though welfare societies provided social security and a prosperous material future, they could not rescue the inhabitants from existiential anxiety. In this way the film was extremely important setting the scene for a new kind of filmmaking that embraced themes that was felt to be vital and very much contemporary. Also the leading Danish film journal Kosmorama devoted a whole issue to the complete script for the film. This also indicated that not only international cinemas, but also national cinema was taken much more serious than previously. Yet, Weekend was not the best of their films. In comparison to Weekend and most other films of the period, the 1966 film the Once There Was a War is outstanding. It tells a story of a 14 year old boy during the Second World War without really focusing much on the war. It was episodic in its storytelling and captured friendship, erotic fascination and family life in an elliptic form that seemed like simple observation, but contained impressing authentic acting, and had a great poetic beauty and some low key humor. In some aspects similar to François Truffaut's, The 400 Blows. [NOISE] [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC] As with films by Wiederberg and Troell, it was mosaic, and less a series of actions towards a goal, than a series of scenes that connected through repetition, variation of motives, and stylistic features, impressionistic, but emotionally vibrating and intense. Apart from new variations of old genres, and a new existential approach, poetic realist film, there were more explicit modernist forms. Kjerulff-Schmidt and Rifbjerg's' Barbara from 1967, is a film that follows its main character and her male counterpart for a series of accidental meetings. Especially the male character expresses sudden bursts of emotions and articulates all kinds of thoughts. It features several self-reflexive elements. For example, the female lead plays a film actress. Despite the shifts between mute and very talkative characters, the film itself seems less articulated. The Danish Barbara and Norwegian Liv are kind of prestigious and respective of Antionioni and Godard and They're both extremely episodic in their narrative forms and very much stylized in their visuals, and their acting, and there is kind of social disconnected, at least their characters are. Both films have their female lead characters in their titles this, and as performers in ways that can reflect modern life. Barbara is a film actress, was a fashion model. [MUSIC]
