Heikki's ref to the Kalevala

[hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Greg Montalbano wrote:
> It was called "The Day the Earth Froze", a Finnish masterpiece of bad acting
> and truly bizarre art direction.
> (BTW, this film describes the mysterious SAMPO as a magical device that
> produces apparently endless quantities of gold, flour and salt)
> >Mystery Science Theatre 3000 has screened a late '50s-early '60 filmic
> >version of this epic. Unfortunately or not, the production values
> >resemble that of a Balto-Scandic Steve Reeves "epic".
> >It was called something else for the anglophone mkt.

Most of the Finnish films of that time, too, are quite ghastly, but
this particular film was a SOVSCOPE film, 90% Soviet production. One 
of the profoundly tragicomic and imperialist Soviet-Finnish "joint" 
efforts which would give camp a bad name. They were regarded as an
obligatory part of the bilateral cultural co-operation "to strenghten 
the warm, strong, and longlasting friendship between the peoples of 
the Soviet Union and Finland". The results were ALWAYS halfbaked and
terrible, and in this case, pure Soviet melodrama exploiting Finnish-
Carelian heritage, drawing on the whole repertoire of Russian kitsch.

But back to my yesterday message: now that I reread it, I noticed at
least one error caused by the haste: when Vainamoinen is wounded, he 
does not go *into* the sea, but has to drift *at* sea for several
years. Sorry.


Heikki