Johan (1921 film)

Last updated

Johan
Johan (Film poster).jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Mauritz Stiller
Screenplay byMauritz Stiller
Arthur Nordén
Based on Johan
by Juhani Aho
Starring Mathias Taube
Jenny Hasselquist
Urho Somersalmi
Hildegard Harring
CinematographyHenrik Jaenzon
Production
company
Distributed byAB Svenska Biografteaterns Filmbyrå
Release date
  • 28 February 1921 (1921-02-28)
Running time
110 minutes
CountrySweden
Languages Silent
Swedish intertitles

Johan (also known as Troubled Waters or Rapids of Life) is a 1921 Swedish film directed by Mauritz Stiller, based on the 1911 novel Johan by Juhani Aho. It tells the story of a young girl, married to an older farmer, who elopes with a handsome stranger, crossing dangerous rapids on a small boat in the process.

Contents

Synopsis

In a remote place of Sweden, men working on the digging of a canal to dry up a marsh are housed in the nearby farms. In one of them live Johan and his mother together with a young girl, Marit. One of the workers tries unsuccessfully to kiss her. Some time later, while Johan is out floating timber on the other side of the river, he falls and crushes his leg. He lights a fire that Marit sees from the house. She crosses the river on a rowing boat and carries him back home and takes care of him. On his sick-bed, he asks her to be his wife. She accepts it quite unresponsively. Johan's mother is determined to avoid what she sees as a misalliance. He reminds her how 18 years before they had found her on the side of the road next to her dying mother. The mother orders Marit to leave the house but Johan, seeing the scene from his sick-bed orders her to stay and eventually marries her against his mother's will.

However Marit is not happy with him. Sometimes, she remembers the handsome stranger who had kissed her and dreams of another life. She becomes more and more distant from him.

One day, the handsome stranger comes back and asks Marit for a room for the night. Marit serves dinner to him and Johan. He makes them drink heavy wine and offers her a scarf. Johan wants to pay him but the stranger laughingly throws the coins in the air, keeping only one of them and Johan crawls on the ground to pick-up the rest. The following day he tries to seduce her, pointing ouot what a lonely and uninteresting life she led. To fight the attraction she unbvoluntarily feels for him, she tries to concentrate on helping Johan cleaning his fishing nets. Suddenly they see on the other side of the river the fire meaning that Johan's mother wants him to come and get her, they both freeze. Once Johan has left, she can't avoid confessing to the stranger that every summer her mother in law comes back to harass her. He tries again to kiss her but she runs indoor. The stranger shrugs his shoulders and leaves, passing Johan's mother on his way to his boat. She begins immediately to scold Marit and, when the latter threatens to leave, answers that nobody is keeping her. Marit runs out of the house telling Johan that she is fleeing his mother. She waves to the stranger who was already in the middle of the river and he comes back to pick her up. When Johan hears someone crying outside, he thinks it is Marit but it is his maid who tells him that she saw the stranger carrying Marit to his boat and rowing towards the rapids. Johan runs along the riverbank for hours without avail.

Marit and the stranger sail down the river on his small boat. As they reach the rapids, she is more and more scared and asks him to take her to land and to let her go. But when they reach the shore, she realises that she has no other choice than to follow him. Johan is determined to catch the man who stole away Marit from him. His mother tells him that she went freely but Johan does not believe her.

Once Marit and the stranger have reached the island where he lives in a shed, her happiness does not last very long. She does not like when he makes fun of her old husband and when she meets an old fisherman who tells her that the stranger brings a new 'summer-girl' every year to his island, she feels regret and mourns what she has lost. She tells the old man what happened with her mother in law and how much she wants to go back to her husband. The old man finds Johan who had been travelling along the river and leads him to the island. When confronted to him the stranger says laughingly that he can have his wife back. Johan starts beating him for having stolen what was the most important for him. When the stranger answers that she has come on her own will he cannot believe it and he is flabbergasted when she confesses. She begs him to forgive her, saying that she lost her head and now knows it is him whom she loves. He tells her to get in the boat and they row homewards on the river and between them comes the stillness that happiness gives. [1]

Cast

Mathias Taube and Jenny Hasselqvist Johan and Marit (Johan, 1921).jpg
Mathias Taube and Jenny Hasselqvist

Production

The film was shot in Norrbotten in July and August 1920. As Finland was still at war with the Soviet Union at the time (the peace would only be signed in October 1920 with the Treaty of Tartu) Stiller chose to shoot it in Sweden, near the city of Kalix.

The most spectacular parts of the film were shot on the river Kalix with its roaring Kamlunge rapids. No tricks or stuntmen were used for the filming and Stiller paid credit to the courage of Urho Somersalmi who steered the boat through the rapids and of Jenny Hasselqvist, who was the first woman to make the travel down the Kamlunge. The managers of the local log floating association advised against the attempt as the journey through the rapids was normally done with a crew of seven men. Stiller persuaded one of them to take him down to demonstrate it was possible. The run through the rapid was filmed both by cameras on the shore and by a camera on a second boat with six men.

Stiller later told how the scene had to be shot on Friday the 13th, and how it was very close to a disaster. Somersalmi was washed overboard at one of the wildest part of the rapids and saved by Hasselqvist. Later, the boat with the camera started sinking and the film was saved by the photographer who jumped overboard and waded to the shore holding the camera high above his head. Stiller declared that he would never make another film in rapids.

Local inhabitants were used as extras and the old man was played by a 70-year-old local fisherman. [2]

Release

The film premièred in Sweden on 28 February 1921 and in Finland on 17 April 1921. [3] It was distributed in 33 markets abroad. Juhani Aho was able to attend the Première in Helsinki a few months before his death. He had himself translated the intertitles and the presentation leaflet in Finnish. He wrote a letter to Mauritz Stiller stating his impressions about the adaptation. He was very enthusiastic about the acting and the technical characteristics of the film but did not hide his disappointment about the happy ending introduced by Stiller. [4]

The film was long considered lost after a fire at the Swedish Film Institute in 1941. Henri Langlois, creator of the Cinémathèque Française considered that it was one of the three most important lost films. However, the largest part of one of the original negatives was found in the early 1960s, and used as the starting point for the film's 1974 black and white restoration and subsequent yellow and orange tinted version in 2001, which is now available on DVD with an original soundtrack by Alexander Popov. [5]

Reviews

Reviews were mixed at the time of the premiere, exuberant praise alternating with hesitant, sometimes even negative assessments. Some reviewers dismissed the film with general phrases, summaries of content, and a few kind words about the actors. Many of the reviews compared the film to Stiller's earlier film Song of the Scarlet Flower, which also included a scene in the rapids. Svenska Dagbladet wrote: ″This is one of the director's best works, and in all respects a film of high rank [...] what was in The Song of the Scarlet Flower dull, artificial and incoherent, is in Johan strong, genuine and solidly built.″ [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juhani Aho</span> Finnish author and journalist (1861–1921)

Juhani Aho, originally Johannes Brofeldt, was a Finnish author and journalist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twelve times.

<i>Saraband</i> 2003 film

Saraband is a 2003 Swedish drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman, and his final film. It was made for Swedish television, but released theatrically in a longer cut outside Sweden. Its United States theatrical release, with English subtitles, was in July 2005. The Swedish television version is 107 minutes, while theatrical releases run just under 2 hours.

<i>The Thirteenth Year</i> American TV movie

The Thirteenth Year is a 1999 American fantasy comedy film directed by Duwayne Dunham and starring Chez Starbuck and Courtnee Draper. It premiered on Disney Channel on May 15, 1999.

<i>A Stranger in the Mirror</i> 1976 novel by Sidney Sheldon

A Stranger in the Mirror is a 1976 novel written by Sidney Sheldon. The novel is one of the earliest of Sheldon's works, but contains the typical Sheldon fast-paced narration and several narrative techniques, with the exception of a twist ending. The novel tells the life story of two fictitious Hollywood celebrities - Toby Temple and Jill Castle and portrays the emotional extremes of success and failure and how people inevitably become victims of time. It was adapted into a television film in 1993 starring Perry King, Lori Loughlin, Christopher Plummer, and Juliet Mills.

<i>Andre</i> (film) 1994 American film

Andre is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by George T. Miller and starring Tina Majorino about a child's encounter with a seal. It is an adaptation of the book A Seal Called Andre, which in turn was based on a true story. It was shot in Vancouver and Mississippi.

<i>Sibelius</i> (film) 2003 Finnish biographical film

Sibelius is a 2003 Finnish film biography of Jean Sibelius directed and written by Timo Koivusalo. It is the first full-length feature film about the famous composer.

<i>Milan</i> (1967 film) 1967 Indian film

Milan is a 1967 Hindi film directed by Adurthi Subba Rao. It was a remake of his hit Telugu film Mooga Manasulu (1963) and was produced by L. V. Prasad. The film stars Sunil Dutt, Nutan, Jamuna, Pran and Deven Varma. The award-winning and very popular music was composed by the duo Laxmikant Pyarelal. It is among the earliest films to deal with the theme of reincarnation.

<i>All Things Fair</i> 1995 film

All Things Fair is a 1995 Swedish period drama film, written and directed by Bo Widerberg as his final film. It tells the story of a sexual relationship between a teacher and her 15-year-old student in Malmö, Sweden during World War II. Widerberg's son Johan stars as the boy Stig and Marika Lagercrantz plays his teacher Viola. The original title is taken from the Swedish hymn "Den blomstertid nu kommer", which is traditionally sung in schools before closing for the summer holiday.

<i>Brudeferden i Hardanger</i> 1926 film

Brudeferden i Hardanger is a 1926 Norwegian silent drama film directed by Rasmus Breistein, starring Aase Bye. The script was written by Breistein, based on the novel Marit Skjølte, by Kristofer Janson. The film is a romantic drama about two lovers who are separated and only get reunited in their old age. It started a trend of national romanticism in Norwegian film.

<i>Juha</i> (Merikanto) Opera by Aarre Merikanto

Juha is a three-act opera by Aarre Merikanto, with a Finnish libretto by Aino Ackté based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Juhani Aho. Although completed by 1922, it was only finally staged at the music college in Lahti on 28 October 1963. The story is a drama of a love triangle: the older husband Juha, his young wife Marja, and her seducer the merchant Shemeikka. Set in the 1880s in Kainuu in northern Finland, the human tragedy is based around the harsh realities of a farming community and the clash of their lifestyle with the more worldly nomadic Karelians, represented by Shemeikka.

<i>The Gospel of Us</i> 2012 Welsh film

The Gospel of Us is a 2012 Welsh drama based on the Owen Sheers novel of the same name and the three-day Passion play that Michael Sheen acted in at his home town of Port Talbot in April 2011. Directed by Dave McKean, the film stars Sheen as The Teacher, a man who has lost all memory of who he is and of the danger his town is facing from a company, ICU. It world premiered at Dawn Breakers International Film Festival.

<i>Mud</i> (2012 film) 2012 American film by Jeff Nichols

Mud is a 2012 American coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Jeff Nichols. In the film, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland portray a pair of teenagers who encounter the titular Mud, a fugitive hiding on a small island, and agree to help him evade his pursuers. Sam Shepard and Reese Witherspoon also star.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Aho</span> Finnish photographer

Claire Anita Aho, was a Finnish photographer.

Juha is a 1937 Finnish drama film directed by Nyrki Tapiovaara, starring Hannes Närhi, Irma Seikkula, and Walle Saikko. It is set in the 18th century and tells the story of a farmer who has married an orphan girl he raised and how a tradesman tries to get her to run away with him to Karelia. The film is based on Juhani Aho's 1911 novel of the same title.

<i>Juha</i> (Madetoja) Opera in three acts by Leevi Madetoja

Juha, Op. 74, is a verismo opera in three acts—comprising six tableaux—written from 1931 to 1934 by the Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja. The libretto, a collaboration between Madetoja and the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté, is based on Juhani Aho's 1911 novel by the same name. The story takes place on the border between West Karelia and East Karelia, and features as its central conflict a love triangle between the farmer Juha, his young wife Marja, and a Karelian merchant, Shemeikka. Disillusioned with rural life and seduced by promises of material comfort and romance, Marja runs away with Shemeikka; Juha, who maintains his wife has been abducted, eventually discovers her betrayal and commits suicide by jumping into the rapids.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venny Soldan-Brofeldt</span> Finnish painter (1863–1945)

Wendla Irene Soldan-Brofeldt, known as Venny was a Finnish painter, illustrator, graphic artist, wood sculptor and jewelry designer. She belonged to the Swedish speaking population of Finland.

Ung Flukt or The Wayward Girl is a 1959 Norwegian film directed by Edith Carlmar with a screenplay by Otto Carlmar and Niels Johan Rud.

<i>Juha</i> (novel) 1911 novel by Juhani Aho

Juha is a novel by Finnish writer Juhani Aho, published in 1911. It is considered one of Aho's most important works: after its publication, Aho consolidated his role as the "national writer" of Finland. The novel is at once characterized as one of his most classical and most modern works. Although taking the form of an epic, Juha does not lack drama in its plot.

<i>My Swedish Cousins</i> Book by Astrid Lindgren

My Swedish Cousins is the title of a book by the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, with photos by Anna Riwkin-Brick. In 1959 the book was published by Rabén & Sjögren.

<i>Juha</i> (1956 film) 1956 Finnish film

Juha is a 1956 Finnish drama film produced, written, and directed by Toivo Särkkä. The film is based on a 1911 novel Juha by Juhani Aho, telling the story of the farm host Juha and his young wife Marja, whose usual everyday life is disrupted when a Karelian traveling merchant arrives and starts seducing the passionate Marja. The film stars Elina Pohjanpää, Eino Kaipainen and Veikko Uusimäki.

References

  1. ↑ Review, synopsis and link to watch the film: "A cinema history" . Retrieved 11 April 2015.
  2. ↑ Troubled waters. Zetterlund & Thelanders Boktryckeri-Aktiebolag. Stockholm 1921
  3. ↑ "Johan (1921) Release Info". IMDb . Retrieved 11 April 2015.
  4. ↑ Juhani Aho: Schweres Blut. Berlin 1976
  5. 1 2 "Johan (1921): Komentar". Swedish Film Database (in Swedish). Swedish Film Institute. Archived from the original on 21 April 2015. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.