Komisario Palmun erehdys | |
---|---|
Directed by | Matti Kassila |
Written by | Matti Kassila Kaarlo Nuorvala |
Based on | Inspector Palmu's Mistake by Mika Waltari |
Produced by | Toivo Särkkä |
Starring | Joel Rinne Matti Ranin Leo Jokela Jussi Jurkka Leevi Kuuranne Elina Pohjanpää |
Cinematography | Olavi Tuomi |
Edited by | Elmer Lahti |
Music by | Osmo Lindeman |
Production company | SF-Filmi |
Distributed by | Suomen Filmiteollisuus |
Release date |
|
Running time | 103 minutes |
Country | Finland |
Language | Finnish |
Komisario Palmun erehdys (Swedish title: Mysteriet Rygseck; international titles: Inspector Palmu's Mistake or Inspector Palmu's Error; [1] US DVD title: The Rygseck Mystery) is a 1960 Finnish crime comedy film directed by Matti Kassila for Suomen Filmiteollisuus. It is set in 1930s Helsinki and centers on Inspector Palmu's investigation of the murder of rich and decadent Bruno Rygseck. It is based on Mika Waltari's 1940 novel of the same name, and was the first film adaptation of his Inspector Palmu novels.
The film was premiered on September 9, 1960, and at the time of its premiere, the film was already a great success with both audiences and critics. [2] It has enjoyed great popularity over the years, and in 2012, it was voted the best Finnish film of all time by Finnish film critics, journalists and bloggers in a poll organized by Yle Uutiset. [3] The film was also shown at the Tampere Film Festival in 1999. [2]
The film was followed by three sequels, Gas, Inspector Palmu! (1961), The Stars Will Tell, Inspector Palmu (1962) and Vodka, Inspector Palmu (1969), which were produced by a different studio, Fennada-Filmi, but directed by Kassila and featured the same core cast.
The film opens with a scene of guests arriving at the crime-themed dinner party of Bruno Rygseck, the rich and decadent heir of the Rykämö concern. The guests are his cousins Airi and Aimo Rykämö, Airi's fiancé Erik Vaara, who works for the concern and strongly dislikes Bruno, and Irma Vanne, the daughter of vuorineuvos Vanne. In order to scare them as they arrive, Bruno has dressed up as the Grim Reaper.
The next morning, inspector Frans J. Palmu and detectives Virta and Kokki are informed that Bruno has drowned in his indoor swimming pool after slipping on a bar of soap. They head to the Rygseck house to conduct a routine investigation. The party guests (with the exception of Vanne), as well as Bruno's aunt Amalia Rygseck and his estranged wife Alli Rygseck, are present at the house, as all of them had had something to discuss with Bruno that morning. As Palmu inspects the bathroom, he begins to suspect that Bruno was in fact murdered. When the policemen are shown around the house by Bruno's manservant, Veijonen, they find Vanne and famous author K.V. Laihonen engrossed in lively conversation in the basement. They are oblivious to the morning's events, as they had entered the house through the back door when coke was delivered in the early morning and have since been in the basement. Although Laihonen does not know Bruno or Vanne from before, he had been invited to the house by her to get back the stolen manuscript of his unpublished novel.
The atmosphere in the house becomes increasingly hostile towards the investigation as Palmu asks more detailed questions about the morning's events. He learns that the previous night, Aimo had stolen Amalia's cat and brought it with him to the dinner party, where Bruno had poisoned it and invited her to view the cadaver for his amusement. Despite Palmu's suspicions, the investigation is closed due to pressure from the powerful Rygsecks and because there is no evidence to prove that the death was anything other than an accident. Laihonen asks the policemen and Vanne to join him at the luxurious Hotel Kämp for a late lunch.
At Kämp, Vanne tells the policemen more about the previous night. They had been playing a game in which each contestant had to commit a crime that the victim could not report to the police. The winner was to be chosen by Vaara at the party. Her crime had been to steal the manuscript; Aimo's to steal the cat; and Airi's to have ten of Aimo's promissory notes signed by Bruno. She had refused to reveal how she had gotten them, other than that it was blackmail. Bruno had then asked Vaara to come to his bedroom in order to show him his crime in private. Afterwards, Vaara had stormed out of the house in fury, after stating that Bruno had won the contest.
When Palmu and the detectives arrive back at the police station late in the afternoon, they are told that Alli Rygseck has been poisoned with prussic acid mixed in her absinthe. She had been back at the Rygseck house to discuss with the family members who was to inherit from Bruno: she had insisted that she should get the house. Bruno's case is now also re-opened, and the policemen head back to the house. Palmu interrogates Airi about the promissory notes, and she reveals that Aimo had been forging Bruno's signature to pay off his gambling debts. Bruno had told her that he would contact the police about it unless she were to agree to do something, although she refuses to specify exactly what. In Bruno's bedroom, Palmu finds an album of nude photographs he had taken of his female friends, with one page torn off.
That evening, the policemen meet Bruno's uncle Gunnar Rygseck, the head of the Rykämö concern, at his office. He tries to bribe Palmu and claims that Bruno was suicidal and had intended the poisoned absinthe for himself before dying accidentally. Next, Palmu confronts Vaara, whose office is in the same building, about what Bruno showed him. It is revealed to have been a nude photograph of Airi, which Palmu notices is a forgery. He tells Vaara that Aimo killed Bruno and that Airi will be imprisoned as an accomplice as she has tried to protect her brother: this leads Vaara to confess to Bruno's murder. Palmu asks for Airi, who also works for the concern, to come to Vaara's office. She confirms that the photograph is forged, and finds the idea that her brother killed Bruno laughable. Vaara takes back his confession, and Palmu admits that he never truly believed either him or Aimo to be the murderer.
Palmu calls the Rygseck house, where Amalia is moving in, and is told by her that Veijonen has disappeared. Palmu goes to interrogate Vanne again, and she confesses to having secretly stayed in Alli Rygseck's old bedroom on the night of the party. When she walked through the corridor leading to the bathroom the next morning in order to get to the back door, she thought that a stair creaked behind her, as if someone else was there as well. Palmu places her under house arrest at Laihonen's apartment.
In order to get the murderer to act, Palmu sends detective Virta to tell all the suspects that Vanne knows something about the murders. He is also to get Bruno's photo album from the Rygseck house and to go show it to Vanne. At the house, Amalia convinces Virta to give her his gun for protection as she is scared of Veijonen. When Virta returns to the station, he learns that Veijonen has been caught and is cleared of the murders. Soon after, Palmu calls Laihonen and asks to speak to Vanne. He admits that she has gone to help Amalia search the house – he had lied to the gullible Virta earlier that she was asleep. The police rush back to the Rygseck house, and stop Amalia from shooting Vanne. In the struggle, Virta is shot in the shoulder.
In the final scene, it is revealed that Amalia has been mentally ill for some time and that she murdered Bruno as revenge for killing her cat. The murder weapon was her umbrella with a sturdy wooden handle that she always carried with her. As she is elderly and not of sound mind, she is not prosecuted but is left to the care of her brother.
Uncredited
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective novel by the British writer Agatha Christie, her third to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The novel was published in the UK in June 1926 by William Collins, Sons, having previously been serialised as Who Killed Ackroyd? between July and September 1925 in the London Evening News. An American edition by Dodd, Mead and Company followed in 1926.
The Hollow is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United States by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1946 and in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in November of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6). A paperback edition in the US by Dell Books in 1954 changed the title to Murder after Hours.
Edith Caroline Rivett was a British crime writer, who wrote under the pseudonyms E. C. R. Lorac, Carol Carnac and Mary Le Bourne during the golden age of detective fiction.
Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating was an English crime fiction writer most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID.
The Clocks is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 7 November 1963 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. It features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The UK edition retailed at sixteen shillings (16/-) and the US edition at $4.50.
"Lamb to the Slaughter" is a 1954 short story by Roald Dahl. It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was published in Harper's Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (AHP) that starred Barbara Bel Geddes and Harold J. Stone. Originally broadcast on April 13, 1958, this was one of only 17 AHP episodes directed by Hitchcock. The episode was ranked #59 of the Top 100 Episodes by TV Guide in 2009. The story was adapted for Dahl's British TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Dahl included it in his short story collection Someone Like You. The narrative element of the housewife killing her husband and letting the policemen eat the evidence was used by Pedro Almodóvar in his 1984 movie What Have I Done to Deserve This?, with a leg of mutton.
Murder Investigation Team is a British police procedural drama/cop thriller series produced by the ITV network as a spin-off from the long-running series The Bill. The series recounts the activities of the Metropolitan Police's Murder Investigation Team, who are led in Series 1 by D.I. Vivien Friend and her more intuitive colleague D.C. Rosie MacManus. Series 2 sees old-school copper Trevor Hand taking the reins under D.C.I. Anita Wishart and manage the newly transferred D.C. Eva Sharpe. The series produced 12 episodes between 3 May 2003 and 1 August 2005. In September 2005, The Sun reported that ITV would not be commissioning a third series.
Roderick Alleyn is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, although the last Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was published in 1982.
Inspector Frans J. Palmu, depicted as "a gruff detective of the Helsinki Police Department", is one of the most popular characters created by Finnish writer Mika Waltari.
Gas, Inspector Palmu! is a 1961 Finnish crime movie directed by Matti Kassila. It is a sequel to Inspector Palmu's Mistake and is followed by The Stars Will Tell, Inspector Palmu. The main cast of actors is the same as that of the first though some actors such as Elina Salo, Pentti Siimes and Aino Mantsas play different characters,
Murder on the Blackboard is a 1934 American pre-Code mystery/comedy film starring Edna May Oliver as schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers and James Gleason as Police Inspector Oscar Piper. Together, they investigate a murder at Withers' school. It was based on the novel of the same name by Stuart Palmer. It features popular actor Bruce Cabot in one of his first post-King Kong roles, as well as Gertrude Michael, Regis Toomey, and Edgar Kennedy.
The Stars Will Tell, Inspector Palmu is a 1962 Finnish comedy-crime film directed by Matti Kassila. It is the third film in the Inspector Palmu series and the second one produced by Fennada-Filmi. The novel was written by Waltari through the explicit request by director Kassila. It is also the last film in the series to be shot in black and white. The fourth film was made without Waltari's involvement.
Vodkaa, komisario Palmu is a 1969 film directed by Matti Kassila. It is the fourth and final part of the Inspector Palmu series and the only part of the series to be filmed in color. The film is also the only one not to be based on a novel by Mika Waltari.
Shield for Murder is a 1954 American film noir crime film co-directed by and starring Edmond O'Brien as a police detective who has become malevolent. It was based on the novel of the same name by William P. McGivern.
"Market For Murder" is the fourth episode of the fifth series of Midsomer Murders and the twenty second episode overall. It stars John Nettles as Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and Daniel Casey as Detective Sergeant Gavin Troy.
Paranoid is a British crime drama, which began broadcasting on ITV on 22 September 2016, and streaming internationally on Netflix in 2016. The eight-part series focuses on a group of UK detectives working for the fictional Woodmere police force attempting to solve the murder of a local doctor who is stabbed at a children's playground. During the course of their investigation, the detectives discover the murder has links to a German pharmaceutical company and they enlist the help of their German colleagues in Düsseldorf to find the killer. Indira Varma, Robert Glenister, and Dino Fetscher star as main protagonists DS Nina Suresh, DC Bobby Day, and DC Alec Wayfield, respectively.
Farewell, Mr. President is a 1987 Finnish action thriller film directed by Matti Kassila and starring Hannu Lauri. It tells the story of a disgruntled waiter planning to assassinate the Finnish President. The film is based on a 1979 thriller novel of the same name by Pentti Kirstilä. Unlike contemporary Finnish films, the film is a thrilling film strongly influenced by post-classic Hollywood films.