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VII
NORWEGIAN FILM
NORWAY must be one of the smallest countries in the world to undertake independent film production. The limiting factors which exist in Sweden and are accentuated in Denmark take their most acute form in Norway, with its population of just over three million people scattered along its deeply serrated coastline. It has been estimated that every fourth person in the country must see a Norwegian-made film before it can meet its production cost, modest though this is. There is no market outside Norway. Film-making and affluence are, therefore, strangers.
Yet one hundred feature films had been made in Norway by 1950. Many of them were produced by Norsk Film, a production company established in 1932 by the organization of municipally-owned cinemas, the Komunale Kinematografers Landsforbund. The others were made by a large number of different companies, formed to produce a specific film and then dissolved. Norsk Film operates the only studio, at Jar, on the outskirts of Olso. Its single stage is adequately equipped.
The first real attempt to produce films in Norway was made at the end of the First World War by Christiania Film. Stimulated by the Swedish example, the producers attempted to make films which drew upon national tradition and the natural beauties of the country. In 1920 a film version was made of Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil. Other films were made on the lives of Norway's sailors and fishermen, but in general they were amateur in standard.
It was not until the formation of Norsk Film that production became stabilized. Tancred Ibsen, grandson of the dramatist, began to direct films for the company. One of the first was Fant (1936), adapted from the novel by Gabriel Scott — a story of the gypsies who, in boats of devious kinds and doubtful age, roam about the fjords of Southern Norway. The approach was romantic rather than socially critical and the use of players from the National Theatre, including Sonja Wigert and Alfred Maurstad, affected the realistic flavour of the film. Tandred Ibsen also directed To Levende og en Dod (Two Living and One Dead) (1939), an adaptation of Sigurd Christiansen's novel analysing the mental struggle of a man who has been superseded by a more fortunate colleague. The players in this psychological
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