Swedish Film: An Introduction and a Reader

By Nordic Academic Press

A compilation of carefully selected articles written by international film scholars, this record provides an in-depth look into the history of Swedish film. This scholarly account covers various phenomena, including the early screenings at the turn of the century, Swedish censorship, the golden age of silent films, 1930s' comedies and melodramas, documentaries, pornography, and experimental films. In addition, this volume examines the work of important contributors, such as Ingmar Bergman, Stefan Jarl, and Peter Weiss, and discusses film policies of the new millennium.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9789187121005

Book preview

I

INSTITUTIONS

Changing Institutions

for Film Screenings

CHAPTER 2

Introduction

Mariah Larsson

The medium of moving images is many things. For about one hundred years, it usually implied projection onto a screen in front of a crowd of people at a public venue. Although challenged by television in the 1950s and by the VCR in the 1970s, film during the larger part of the 20th century equalled entertainment in theatres. As such, it existed in the public sphere, within different contexts and subject to various institutional influences. It would be the object of moral panics and fears, causing debates and leading to laws and regulations. It could be a promising business area producing and distributing films supporting audiences’ habitual consumption of moving dreams. It could also be a form of expression considered to be valuable from aesthetic, political, educational and financial perspectives, supported by small organisations as well as state institutions offering support.

Among the more controversial institutions influencing cinema has been that of censorship. Most well-known, perhaps, Hollywood regulated its own censorship through the Production Code from the 1930s and into the 1960s when the code was replaced by the rating system still used today. In Sweden, as early as 1911, film censorship was regulated by an exception to the constitutional freedom of expression, and enforced by Statens Biografbyrå (the National Board of Film Censors). Although often criticised by film scholars, censorship – state-regulated like in Sweden or industry-regulated like in the US – is an important part of the institution of film screenings and intricately interwoven with its public nature. As later debates concerning video and the Internet have shown, there is a huge difference between the approaches to what is regarded as belonging to the private spheres and the approaches to things existing in a public sphere. Nevertheless, in Sweden films distributed on VHS and DVD and screened at home on television were also subjected to regulations which made it possible to censor them as well.

Furthermore, the public exhibition of films needed venues for their screening. As Åsa Jernudd demonstrates in the excerpt from her book on early cinema in Örebro (in the next part of this volume), the earliest film screenings were not in cinemas but in other locales. Soon, however, film theatres were built, and their history is no less a film history than the history of film censorship, film production or of film policies. The rapid changes during the past ten or fifteen years – home movie set-ups with DVD players, home projectors, surround systems with multiple loudspeakers, Internet with legal as well as illegal file sharing of films, YouTube, digital television with pay-per-view options, the latest developments with high resolution images resulting in Blu-ray discs and flat screen HD televisions – have altered our concept of what film is, changed distribution patterns, challenged as well as reinforced hegemonic Hollywood and made ‘going to the movies’ only one of a number of ways to watch films. Cinephiles consider the darkened auditorium and images projected on a large screen to be the only true cinema; others prefer cinemas as a public place for entertainment and meeting friends, and still others do not really differentiate between the ways in which a film can be stored, distributed and experienced. A movie is a movie.

In the two first texts, different aspects of the institution of film screening are highlighted. Kjell Furberg’s piece deals with the public exhibition of film, the movie theatres where films, for the largest part of the 20th century, were most often screened. Retracing the steps of generations of film-goers, Furberg describes the development of theatres: their architecture, their customs, their demographics, and their geography. Accordingly, Furberg also expresses sorrow over what he regards as the disrespectful treatment of cinemas and the detoriation of cinema-going practices during the past decades. Originally published in a photo book consisting of images of different theatres in various parts of Sweden as well as brief articles on each theatre, Furberg’s text outlines the history of the buildings where films were screened.

The second text was written by Jan Holmberg as an introduction to a series of screenings at the Cinematheque in 2003–2004, dedicated to the issue of censorship. Most of the films mentioned in the text were screened in the series and, as can be seen, censorship applied to foreign as well as domestic films. In 2009 a specially commissioned report recommended that the National Board of Film Censors should be abolished and that film censorship for adults should no longer be allowed. However, the National Board of Film Censors has for film scholars for a long time been a highly contested institution, and when Holmberg’s text was written no end to film censorship was expected. This attitude is reflected in the text, which is not only informative about how censorship worked (absurdly consistently as well as meticulously) but also illustrates how many film scholars have felt about the censoring of their chosen subject.¹

Notes

1 Since Jan Holmberg’s text is written as an introduction there are no references, but for those interested in reading more in the Swedish language about the National Board of Film Censors, there are a number of books, such as Gunnel Arrbäck (2001), Statens Biografbyrå 1911–2000, Stockholm: Statens Biografbyrå; Gunnel Arrbäck, ed. (2001), 90 år av filmcensur, Stockholm: Statens Biografbyrå; or the older Arne Svensson (1976), Den politiska saxen: en studie i Statens Biografbyrås tillämpning av den utrikespolitiska censurnormen sedan 1914, Stockholm: Stockholms universitet.

CHAPTER 3

Going to the Cinema

Kjell Furberg

The cinema was once popular entertainment in the genuine sense of the word. For a long time a visit to the cinema was an important social and cultural event for many people – they went out to the cinema. Industrialism had caused people to move away from the countryside and into the towns. These people now had both leisure time and a wage. Cinemas met the demand for entertainment that arose – it became an affordable luxury for those who had neither the money nor the opportunity of going to the theatre, but in contrast to the traditional theatre it was, despite everything, a democratic part of everyday life.

You go to a cinema to watch a film in an environment most conducive to its enjoyment, but also to be together with other people. With its special architecture, interior design and artistic decoration, the cinema theatre has, since its inception, been an important frame of suggestion surrounding the experience of the imaginative world of film. At the same time the cinema auditorium is an environment that is almost absent: we only see it for a very short time before the lights are dimmed and the film starts. For this reason, cinemas have been designed so that these few minutes should increase the cinemagoer’s expectations of the miracle that is about to take place on the white screen. This illusion is already present out on the street with the lit-up signs by the entrance, the posters, the baldachin-like canopy. In the foyer you purchase your ticket and perhaps some sweets. This is also where you wait for those joining you, and before you can enter the auditorium; at best this is an environment and an atmosphere which enhances the sense of occasion. Finally, you show your ticket to the usher and then enter the holy of holies: the auditorium itself. Once inside, you are charmed by the coloured pattern projected on the silver curtain, the gong sounds and the curtain starts to open with a little jerk – while the lights in the auditorium are gradually dimmed and the film starts. During the first half of the 20th century, until television made its breakthrough in the 1950s, cinemas were the only place you could experience a film – nowadays, small children see motion pictures on television long before they can even talk.

Our leading architects, interior designers and artists have been involved in the creation of the Swedish cinemas – these entertainment palaces that were a synthesis of art and the spectacular, or sometimes of the sumptuously vulgar. Our cinemas effectively demonstrate the development of Swedish architecture and design. Only a few cinemas have survived from the golden days of cinema, and very few of these have been preserved and cared for in a fitting manner, avoiding clumsy, philistine ‘renovation’. Cinemas have always been designed in a trendy or spectacular manner. Today, when we examine the scattered remnants – the few cinema theatres that are more or less intact – we realise that trendiness has also been part of the strength of the cinema architecturally, as well as in regard to the interior design. Modern designers have had few qualms when wholeheartedly embracing the very latest fashions when it comes to creating suitable settings and moods. These cinemas are quite simply typical of their times. But their very trendiness has also made them vulnerable. When new decades meant new ideal styles, a cinema could suddenly become hopelessly old-fashioned and it was not unusual for the whole design concept to be destroyed while new interior features were stuck on top of old ones. Marble, mirrors, stucco work, painted decorations, fine woodwork and imitation leather were all removed with a wave of a magic wand in an amateurish effort to ‘improve’ things and due to the short-sighted adherence to trends. The result was mishmash – neither fish nor fowl.

Film and the cinema came to Sweden exactly six months later than in Paris, on 28 June 1896, arriving at the Industrial and Handicrafts Exhibition in Malmö. The venue was a theatre building in Moresque style, specially designed for the exhibition. It can be noted that the first cinema premises, not only in Sweden but also in Paris, were designed in an oriental or exotic style – and this would again be popular among Swedish cinema designers in the 1920s.

After 1896 the novelty spread throughout Sweden. Film exhibitors travelled up and down the country with portable projectors. They rented some suitable hall, such as temperance lodges, Free Church mission houses, theatre auditoria and soon even premises belonging to the labour movement. So, in fact, in these first years film was to a great degree a socially acceptable phenomenon. There were even touring tent cinemas, but these were not so common. Sometimes films were shown as part of a variety of circus performances. In Stockholm the breakthrough came at the General Art and Industry Exhibition on Djurgården, where the Lumières Kinematograf was run by Numa Peterson. The cinema was housed in a miniature medieval Stockholm setting.

When the exhibition closed in the autumn, Peterson’s son, Mortimer, continued to run the Lumières Kinematograf in a room with sixty-three seats at Kungsträdgårdsgatan 12. This was Stockholm’s – and Sweden’s – very first permanent cinema, but it closed down after ten months. The lack of new films meant that the incipient cinema fashion more or less died out. It was not until 1904 that Stockholm’s next permanent cinema was established: the Ideal. A few days later the third permanent cinema in Stockholm opened: the Blanch-Biografen.

The Dane Niels Le Tort played an important role as an entrepreneur in this pioneering cinema epoch: he opened Gothenburg’s first permanent cinema, situated in the Arkaden, in July 1902. Initially there was no projection booth – the projectionist and projector were under a cloth in the auditorium. In Malmö, too, Le Tort opened the city’s first permanent cinema, in August 1904: Malmös Biografteater.

Places where films were screened did not originally have their own names. Adverts emphasised the name of the projector, which gave us the first word for cinema: kinematografteater. The Royal Biograph was a brand name for a type of projector that Niels Le Tort used at the screenings in the Blanch-Biografer in Stockholm in 1903. He advertised biografföreställningar, i.e. biograph performances. The Royal Biograph was reputed to be a projector of the very highest quality. Other exhibitors started to advertise their biograf performances too, despite their having less reputable projectors. Within a year or so, the word biograf became the general term for a film projector, and – in a transferred sense – for a place where films were shown. The word biograf comes from the Greek: bios means life, and grafein means to draw or write.

Sweden’s foremost expert on the history of Stockholm cinema theatres, Olle Waltå, has noted that the word biograf was first used in a newspaper advertisement in Stockholm as early as 3 January 1899 – this was ironically for a film screening that was part of a circus performance. It was probably the name of the projector that was being referred to on that occasion. Initially, the rather elegant combination biografteater was the common term for a cinema. But already early in the century, people started to say simply biograf, which was soon shortened to ‘bio’. Only Swedish and Danish use bio and biograf as the words for a cinema; it is also used as a loanword in Icelandic, Faroese and Greenlandic.

In 1909 an international agreement was signed to regulate the rental of film copies to exhibitors, which improved ways of establishing permanent cinemas. But hiring out films had been introduced several years earlier. When the film exhibitor, during the pioneer period, had shown the films that he owned in one place, he had to move on to find a new public; some film exhibitors did, of course, sell films to each other. Now that they could rent films, it was possible to have a permanent cinema – the film was changed, not the audience, and the repertoire could be regularly renewed. The travelling exhibitors still played a fairly important role, in particular away from the larger urban areas, and they did not go out of business completely until after the breakthrough of television in the late 1950s.

Around 1905 the first cinemas were built that were specially designed for showing films, but they were few in number. There was still an uncertain supply of films, and there was no domestic Swedish production until 1908. It was not until after 1910 that the building of cinemas really got under way, and the number of permanent cinemas in Sweden in 1911 was estimated at about 200. The oldest purpose-built cinema still intact and well-preserved today is the Scala in Ystad, opened in 1910. The oldest permanent cinema that was built in an existing building and is still showing films today is the Saga in Kalmar, from 1906. This was established by a firm called Kristianstads Biografteater, which had been started the previous year and was re-structured as Svenska Biografteatern (Svenska Bio) in 1907. This company had a building erected in Kristianstad in 1908 which contained the Kosmorama cinema (opened in 1909), office premises, laboratory and a film studio up on the top floor. Charles Magnusson was recruited from Gothenburg as company director, and the company moved to Stockholm in 1911. The following year Svenska Bio established a film studio on the island of Lidingö, outside Stockholm, and this marked the start of stable Swedish film production – which was an important precondition for the building of cinemas on a large scale. The company merged with Filmindustri AB Skandia in 1919, thus forming Svensk Filmindustri (SF), which as a result of other mergers over the years developed into the largest cinema chain in Sweden, as well as a production and film distribution company.

One of the most interesting cinemas from the pioneering period is the Svea in Sundsvall, designed by the architect of Stockholm’s city hall, Ragnar Östberg, and opened in 1912. It is still intact today and in 1988 was the first cinema theatre to be classified as a building of special historical interest that should be preserved for cultural reasons.

In the second decade of the 20th century, cinema interiors became all the more sophisticated as attempts were made to emulate the architecture and interior design of the most magnificent drama theatres. These attempts continued for decades: cinema proprietors were trying to get a good reputation and a bit of ‘cultural veneer’ for the popular and at times somewhat dubious cinema entertainment so that a cinema theatre would come to be regarded as a respectable establishment – film censorship was introduced in 1911. A milestone in cinema history was the building of the lavish, artistically decorated Röda Kvarn in Stockholm, opened on 30 December 1915. Here was a surfeit of classical elements, works of art and luxury, and this cinema theatre came to be something of a model for the rest of the country.

During this same decade the Jugendstil was replaced by National Romanticism, but these two styles were often mixed and were even garnished with classicism elements. The interiors tended to be rather jumbled, heavy and overloaded, but there was nevertheless an unmistakable ambiance of culture and refinement. During the whole of the silent film era the film screen was normally painted directly on the wall. The curtain was copied from the drama theatres, but cinemas did not really have the same need of a curtain and it was primarily for decoration and as an attractive framework for the film screening.

At about this time many cinema proprietors felt they were in far too weak a position vis-à-vis the film distributors, so in order to become more independent they formed Sveriges Biografägareförbund (Swedish Association of Cinema Proprietors) in 1915.

The 1920s meant larger, palatial auditoria in Swedish cinemas, the largest of which seated almost 1500 people. Swedish neoclassicism made its breakthrough, and the interiors became lighter, more open and smarter – not nearly as overburdened as in the previous decade. It was popular to have a feeling of outdoors and various types of stylised firmaments on the auditorium ceilings. The most original cinema from this period is the Skandia in Stockholm, designed by architect Erik Gunnar Asplund and opened in 1923. The Skandia has long been famous throughout the world, and is still reasonably intact. In the late 1920s elements of art deco were gradually incorporated in the neoclassicism, and there were sometimes design features from ancient Pompeii, Greece and Egypt, as well as from China.

It was still, however, the drama theatre that served as a model when new cinemas were built and decorated. At the end of the 1920s sound film was introduced in some of the premier cinemas of the larger towns and cities. In the smaller cinema theatres, especially in country districts, there was a delay of one or a few years before sound films could be shown, but 1930 was the major breakthrough year in Sweden. Towards the end of the 1920s decorative canopies (known in Sweden as baldachins) started to appear over the entrances to new cinemas.

The year 1930 was also the year of the major breakthrough of Swedish functionalism, funkis, which was presented at the international Stockholm Exhibition that same year. Funkis and sound film went hand-in-hand, and cinemas were thoroughly transformed. One is tempted to say that it was first now that ‘proper’ cinemas came into being; free from the ambition to emulate the drama theatre, and with enough self-respect to stand on their own feet. In the early 1930s some aesthetically pure functionalist cinemas were built. However, not very many cinemas were actually built at this time: the Kreuger crash marked the start of an economic depression.

In the mid 1930s cinema construction got under way again, and now a style was developed which, while based on functionalism, meant a little more decoration and cosiness. This funkis period was also the heyday of canopies with neon lights, which were a feature of cinema entrances until the end of the 1950s. The first neon signs were probably put up at the Sture in Stockholm in 1925. A warm degree of intimacy matched with a worldly elegance and comfort were characteristic of pre-war cinema style – luxury that contrasted strongly with the overcrowded and rather primitive housing conditions of most Swedes at the time. Perhaps the century’s artistic zenith as regards architecture, design and decoration was reached in the cinema building-boom, which lasted from the late 1930s until 1943.

With the advent of sound film a proper film screen became a necessity – the loudspeaker was placed in the middle behind the screen, which could thus no longer be painted directly onto the wall. The silent era convention of a centre aisle in the middle of the seating area was abandoned; after all, the best seats were in the middle, in front of the screen, as regards both sound and picture. Towards the end of the decade it became more common to build cinemas without a balcony, which meant that the stalls seating area could be sloped at a greater angle to provide a better view of the screen. The Draken cinema in Stockholm, from 1938, was seminal in that respect.

During the 1930s and the war years cinemas became all the more popular. In 1941 the cinema branch agreed that no more new cinemas should be opened – they thought that there were enough of them already and wanted to restrict competition. Any cinemas that had already been planned could, however, be built, and some were thus opened in 1942–43. The cinema proprietors had made plenty of money and now they invested some of this in renovation rather than new buildings, and this of course meant that many of the silent era cinemas were damaged. In this funkis era classicism and other older styles were not valued very highly, and a number of cinemas were radically transformed and given a dull, stuck-on, funkis appearance in both the auditorium and foyer. Most of the canopies on the former silent film cinemas were added in 1942–43, regardless of the degree to which this defaced the entrance and portico.

The restriction on new cinemas was not lifted until 1954, and during the few years before the breakthrough of television about 1958 a number of new cinemas were built. In stylistic terms these reflected an independent 1950s modernism, which did however build upon the functionalism of the 1930s and 1940s. The major H55 design exhibition in Helsingborg in 1955 introduced a new elegance, and this was often demonstrated in the new cinemas. The 1930s’ idea of cinemas without balconies and with a good gradient in the auditorium was developed further, and the size of the screen grew ever larger.

In 1953 the CinemaScope format was presented; this was a very wide film format with a 1 : 2.3 picture ratio. In the USA this was a way of dealing with the competition from television. In Sweden this novelty came as something of a bonus, as we still did not have television here. The new picture format often meant that the film screen had to be widened, and thus the proscenium too, which commonly led to unfortunate changes in the appearance of the auditorium. Until about 1960 efforts were usually made to find harmonious and stylistically suited solutions to this problem. At the end of the decade, just when Swedish television was becoming a threat, other picture formats came along: these included Todd-AO introduced in 1959, which was 70 mm film (ordinary cinema film is 35 mm wide). With the Todd-format the size of the image was actually better than for 35 mm film. Another system was Cinerama, and the related Cinemiracle presented in 1958. Three projectors were run simultaneously side-by-side so that an enormous picture could be screened; a combination of the three images together. These systems required really huge screens. Cinerama was so difficult to deal with and the freight costs of the film copies were so expensive that the format was discontinued in 1964. By then the competition from television had really made itself felt.

Just after the mid 1950s, the same time that television started up, the audience figures for Swedish cinemas were the highest ever. And there were more cinema theatres than at any other time: about 2,500 in all. As a ratio of cinemas to population, this was a European record. This was in part due to the unique structure of cinema ownership in Sweden, with its many cinemas owned by popular movements. The temperance societies and the labour movement were quick to equip their lodges and folkets hus (community halls affiliated to the labour movement) with film projectors. It was a way of helping to finance other activities. It also meant a great deal for the spread of film and cinema culture and making it extensively available, not least in country districts. This type of cinema was seldom designed and fitted out purely as a cinema theatre. Instead it was often a question of an unglamorous hall with several functions: meeting hall, concert hall, theatre stage and auditorium, dance floor – and cinema.

Swedish television started broadcasting in 1956, and made its definitive breakthrough in 1958 with the World Cup in football. Most cinema proprietors stuck it out until about 1960. There were even some new cinemas built between 1959 and 1961. But by 1960 it was clear that the audience figures had declined drastically. Cinemas started to close down, and many were demolished. Those remaining were often subject to irreverent renovation projects in the 1960s and 1970s, which often displayed even greater insensitivity than in the 1940s.

The Swedish Film Institute’s building Filmhuset (House of Film) with its three cinemas, the Victor, the Mauritz and the Julius (the references being to Sjöström, Stiller and Jaenzon), was designed by architect Peter Celsing and opened in 1971. This building was a purist’s expression of 1960s modernism in an independent, uncompromising manner, and he succeeded in creating a contemporary, yet unique building of the very highest artistic and architectonic quality. The Cinemateket film club screens films in the Bio Victor, but there are no public screenings in the Filmhuset cinemas. The Bio Victor is still one of Sweden’s best film auditoria, and when it was built it was ahead of its time, with its steeply sloping floor and large film screen.

The introduction of television permanently changed people’s life patterns. The consumption of moving pictures, measured in time per day and per person, has increased in Sweden ever since films started to be shown in 1896. But a negligible amount of this takes place in cinemas. We watch television for about two -and-a-half hours each day, while we spend an average of about half a minute in a cinema. This can also be expressed by saying that we go to the cinema just under twice during a typical year – before television we went just over ten times a year. But even though cinema-going has declined drastically since the advent of television, watching films at the cinema never exceeded three minutes per day, even in the 1950s. Today’s two-and-a-half hours of television per day – to which should now be added an increasing amount of time in front of PCs – have, however, almost entirely absorbed what leisure time is left after allowing for daily commuting, shopping, laundry, personal hygiene and household work, i.e. the time that should otherwise make social intercourse possible. Perhaps this is the greatest change ever in our life as social beings: the moving pictures on the television screen automatically attract our attention, and nowadays we rarely look one another in the eye at home. Today it is even common that family members spend the evenings isolated in their own rooms, each one watching a different channel on his or her own television set.

When it first arrived, television was regarded as a technical advance on showing film – the cinema in effect became old-fashioned overnight! This was a misunderstanding: the film image on a television is, on the contrary, primitive because the sharpness is of decidedly inferior quality. Television was in fact purely a convenient and accessible picture source in people’s homes.

In the old days every village had its own church. Later, the cinema came to characterise the urban environment as well as entertainment, and it has had an important symbolic value as a social meeting place, not least for younger people. But the age of the television has coincided with the de-population of the Swedish countryside. The local cinema is just about hanging on in many smaller communities, if it has survived at all. The only way for many cinemas to survive at all outside larger towns is if both proprietors and staff are committed idealists. In many respects it is now the local petrol filling station that has become the new central point where people tend to congregate, now that the local café, hot-dog stall and cinema have all been closed. The filling station is nowadays a miniature department store, with fuel, groceries, a video section, etc. and even a simple café with hot-dogs, coffee and cakes. In fact it has everything you could need in a modern society. And then all that remains is to drive home. Curtain!

The first constructive idea for dealing with the competition from television came from Sandrews (an integrated film and cinema company). In 1970 the managing director of Sandrews invented the multi-screen cinema together with architect Fredrik von Platen. An old cinema was divided into three small auditoria and was reopened in 1970 as a multiplex cinema. It was hoped that if, in the same building, more films could be shown in auditoria of adequate size, then the cinema would become profitable again. This was conditional upon automated running which did not require more staff than the old single-screen cinema. At the same time the interior was adapted to suit modern times: simplification, reduction and standardisation were the order of the day. Decorative elements and curtains were removed, and all surfaces were painted in red and black. In some instances there was a return to the old painted screens of the silent film era, with loudspeakers placed on the floor in front. Lighting was arranged with the help of light rails on which dazzling spotlights were affixed, pointing in all directions.

In the 1970s Sandrews continued to ‘butcher’ and remodel old cinemas throughout the country, and they even started to build new multi-screen cinemas. These new multiplexes were often sited in basement premises, which meant lower rental costs. Sandrews’ multi-screen investment was an emergency solution, but it was successful from a financial point of view and meant that while many older cinemas were admittedly largely destroyed, despite everything they were not closed down.

Exactly ten years later, in 1980, Svensk Filmindustri opened their first major multi-screen project: the Filmstaden in Stockholm. This had a great deal in common with Sandrews’ multiplex cinemas: the small, curtainless auditoria, rather small screens and floors that did not have a sufficient gradient. There were, however, more auditoria than at Sandrews: at first eleven, which later became fifteen. The decoration and atmosphere were more varied than in Sandrews; in Filmstaden it was designed by the idiosyncratic interior designer Lennart Clemens – although rather sickly-sweet like a children’s nursery with pastel shades and patterns.

Cinema design took yet another step backwards in qualitative development. In some multiplexes the screens had rounded corners, as in the early days of the silent era, thereby forcing CinemaScope into an unintended, rounded frame which cut off all the corners. The ambition was evidently to emulate the rounded corners of the early television screen – perhaps so that the audience would feel at home.

Translated by Rod Bradbury

Excerpt from Kjell Furberg (2000), Svenska biografer, Stockholm: Prisma.

CHAPTER 4

Censorship in Sweden

Jan Holmberg

‘And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?’ The words are Plato’s, in The Republic, from 360 bc. In this utopia about how the ideal state should be organised, he accordingly concluded that ‘the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad … but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.’ He continues to talk about a writer who described how one of the gods had committed an injustice. For if the gods can make mistakes, so can people, and maybe even follow the gods’ examples. ‘The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery …’

‘Censorship’, from the Latin censure, to assess. The word has a deafening ring of political dictatorship or religious bigotry, with accompanying bulls of excommunication and book burnings. For a modern democracy to retain an agency whose mission is to protect citizens from their culture may seem grotesque. Yet Plato’s argument sounds familiar, although over 2,000 years old. Society, and especially its vulnerable groups, must be protected from inappropriate fiction. However, as already noted by the philosopher, full protection is impossible: we must therefore look to limit its spread to a small trusted group.

In Sweden, of course, there is no censorship, there is freedom of speech. With one exception: the medium of film. It is unclear why, since, despite persistent attempts, no one has been able to prove precisely how film might be more detrimental than other art forms. The ‘chosen few’, using Plato’s words, who have secretly been able to see works that others have not, is here called Statens Biografbyrå (the National Board of Film Censors). Since the inauguration of the Board in 1911, films can be censored heavily or even completely banned. In a society where media seems harder to control than ever, film censorship, it would seem, might lead a fading existence. Why preview a film for cinema release when it is already or will soon be available on DVD? The Board itself understands the consequences of these technological changes and has in fact practically abolished adult censorship. Its main task now is to determine age limits and review voluntarily submitted pornographic films, whose distributors can thus exclude themselves from the risk of subsequently being prosecuted for the illegal depiction of violence (‘olaga våldsskildring’).

Censorship is a multifaceted phenomenon, and any serious discussion should be broadened to consider the economic conditions that determine which films are distributed, or even why most films are so similar. Film style and form can be said to be expressions of an effective self-censorship, dictated by the goal that the products should at least return the large capital invested. The concept of ‘mainstream’ really says it all: for a film to be produced, and furthermore have an audience and hence a profit, it may not differ too much from ingrained norms or beliefs about what makes a film ‘good’.

This is not the place for such a larger discussion. Instead, I will give a brief historical exposition to illuminate the development of Swedish censorship. In 1911, the Swedish Cinema Regulation Act was implemented, which held that films could not be approved ‘whose displaying would be contrary to common law or morality, or otherwise be able to operate in a brutalising, exciting way, or to confuse the concepts of law. Images that depict horror scenes, suicide or serious crimes in such a manner or in such a context that such effects can be achieved, may thus not be approved.’ Furthermore, children’s spiritual development and health was particularly cherished, and a 15-year age limit was established. Although obviously some changes in cinema regulation have been made over almost a hundred years, we can note that both the 15-year age limit as a marker between child and adult, as well as some key phrases, still persist. Brutalising (‘förråande’) is still the key word used to justify censorship of adult films, and the films given an age limit are those that are judged as likely to cause psychological harm to children.

In the first year of 1911, a large number of films were banned and many more were cut. Most of these are now lost, but it may still be of interest to see what the justifications could look like. The film Skolkamraterna eller Affären V Lorcineq (the original, possibly French title is unknown, presumed lost), for example, was banned with the following assessment: ‘Contrary to morality. Extremely distasteful scenes between a married man, his friends and a collection of easy ladies in chambres séparées. All are e.g. extremely drunk.’ Another film reviewed in the same year entitled Lokomotivföraren (origin unknown, presumed lost) was banned because it could ‘act to confuse ideas of right and justice’ when a jailer fails his duty because of friendship. Today neither of these censorship reasons exist anymore: the Swedish obscenity law which prohibited ‘offence to discipline and morality’ (‘sårande av tukt och sedlighet’) was removed in 1971; more remarkable is perhaps that the clause ‘inciting criminal behaviour’ was not abolished until the early 1990s.

The earliest film in the Cinematheque censorship series is Sergei Eisenstein’s classic Bronenosets Potemkin / Battleship Potemkin (1925). By the time of the First World War, a new criterion in the Cinema Regulation Act was introduced, having to do with the nation’s relationship with foreign powers. The new clause was to be applied frequently during the two World Wars. But even if this probably played a role in the prohibition of Potemkin, the film was banned only on the grounds of being ‘exciting’. The ban came to be sustained for thirty years, but the film was still being widely distributed outside the regular repertory cinema, in screenings organised by, for instance, trade union associations and political parties.

Two other true classics, the style-setting gangster film Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931) and Tod Browning’s circus story Freaks (1932) were both prohibited as harmfully exciting (‘skadligt upphetsande’). For the latter, the censorship document description is simply wonderful: ‘Hans the dwarf, belonging to some kind of circus offering nothing but monstrosities, falls in love with the grossly sensual trapeze artist Cleopatra.’

Our series includes three films related to the Second World War in various ways. Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel Smith (1941), in which he plays a modified Scarlet Pimpernel saving Jews from the Nazis, was banned under the aforementioned criterion of relationship with a foreign power. ‘The ending’, the censorship motivation claimed, is ‘impossible as long as the current German government remains in power’. Alain Resnais’s Holocaust documentary Nuit et brouillard / Night and Fog (1955) was cut by several minutes. Despite the film’s apparent purpose of depicting the Nazi crimes, the most obvious results were not to be shown to a Swedish audience: ‘omit images of mutilated corpses, several scenes of naked corpses, the pictures of the macabre tractor corpse transportation, detached skulls and images of the amassing of corpses in tomb.’ Georges Franju’s horrible slaughterhouse depiction Le Sang de bêtes / Blood of the Beast (1949) has sometimes been interpreted as an allegory of the Holocaust, a subtlety that surely escaped the censors, who banned it instead as ‘harmfully exciting’.

Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is considered by many to be one of the best noir films ever made. Raymond Chandler, who wrote the original novel, described the plot as so complicated that he could not even make sense of it himself. The ban was sustained for many years, and one can imagine that the erotic allusions in the dialogue between Bogart and Bacall had a major impact on the decision.

Three of the best films of 1960 were all censored in Sweden: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor. In Psycho, with absurd consistency, the film’s far and away most famous sequence, the shower scene, was cut. The other two films were totally banned. Peeping Tom is perhaps especially interesting in this context, since its topic is quite literally the effect of film: the psychotic protagonist’s murder weapon is a film camera, in the tripod of which he has mounted a knife. With this device he can, as it were, shoot