Cross of Love ***** (no 42)

 

by Allan Fish

(Finland 1946 99m) DVD2 (Finland only)

Aka. Rakkauden Risti

Omen of storm and death

p  Teuvo Tulio  d  Teuvo Tulio  w  Nisse Him  story  Alexander Pushkin  ph  Pentti Lintonen, Uno Pihlström  ed  Teuvo Tulio  m  Tauno Marttinen (including J.S.Bach)  art  Kosti Aaltonen

Regina Linnanheimo (Riitta), Oscar Tengström (Lighthouse Kalle), Ville Salminen (Consul Mauri Holmberg), Rauli Tuomi (Henrik Hormi), Pentti Viljanen (Pekka), Senja Soitso (Maija), Hilly Lindqvist (Saara), Lauri Korpela (pilot),

The history of Finnish cinema remains shrouded in mystery to the English-speaking world, whose view dates back only as far as the early works of Aki Kaurismäki or, at the very earliest, Jorn Dönner.  There are various films in the murky past that are whispered in the realms of the mighty, especially the thirties dramas of Nyrki Taviopaara, Juha and, especially, Stolen Death.  The most famous Finnish film-maker of the period, however, was former matinee idol actor Teuvo Tulio, whose series of melodramas from the late thirties to the early fifties not only encapsulated the very nature of his homeland, but managed to transcend local stereotypes to become memorable exercises in tragic melodrama in their own right.  His adherents will perhaps choose the 1938 The Song of the Blood Red Flower as his pivotal work, but I pick Cross of Love for several reasons.

            A sixtyish man, known as Lighthouse Kalle due to living on a lighthouse virtually uninterrupted for thirty years, goes mad one night during a storm and shoots at a shipwreck survivor clinging to the lighthouse rock.  He only surface injures him, and the following morning the survivor is told how he’s sent insane during storms due to what happened to his daughter five years earlier.  In flashback, we see how another storm brought another survivor to the rock, and he was taken in and looked after by Kalle and his daughter, Riitta.  He goes away, but comes back with the intention of seducing the naïve Riitta, who he takes back to the mainland for the night and effectively rapes.  Feeling herself unable to go back to her father, she’s forced to stay in the city, but her seducer grows tired of her, she goes from lover to lover and eventually falls into prostitution.  Then, one day, she meets an artist who asks her to pose for him…

            What’s most remarkable about Cross of Love, and Tulio’s films in general, is their absolute honesty with regards to sexuality.  There’s no pussyfooting around calling prostitutes waitresses, seamstresses or any other Hollywood euphemism.  In several of Tulio’s films there are nude scenes, and this is no different, the first, a skinny-dipping scene off a lighthouse alerting us most succinctly as to the survivor’s lecherous intentions.  Here’s a film that calls a spade a spade, with Riitta running the gamut of clichés as a prostitute, from the raincoat and beret to being left her payment on the bedside table.  There’s also more than just a hint of cynicism, such as in the scene where Riitta being told she will be happy by the artist, then cutting to her in a veil with Mendelssohn blaring, only for it to die down when the camera tracks back to reveal her trying it on at work as a dressmaker.  Most remarkable in this transformation is the performance of its star, and Linnanheimo, the queen of Finnish melodrama and Tulio’s long-time partner, is quite astonishing in her portrayal of fresh-faced innocent transformed into world-weary hussy.  The look of her lying back in bed after receiving payment for her services, lighting up a cigarette, reeking damaged goods from every sinew, is in stark contrast to her purity in the opening scenes.  Credit, too, to Pengström, especially in the magnificent opening scene set to Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue’, shot in expressionist style lighting up his face not dissimilarly to Emil Jannings in Faust.  Gorgeously shot in a variety of styles, it’s a supreme triumph for director and star alike, with an eponymous painting that seems, like those in Portrait of Jennie, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Laura, to have a life, or rather death, of its own.  It’s also a doorway into a world, a director and a national cinema far too long neglected in the west.