Friday 30 December 2022

Ver Var Engang En Krig / Once There Was a War (1966 Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt)

It's wartime in occupied Denmark. But life goes on a for a typical family. Our focus is mainly on a teenaged boy, the youngest child with two older sisters, and his episodic adventures with school, parties, his bicycle and best friend, books, fantasies, jokes. The music's by Bach and Chopin and a great deal of what we might call 'Woody Allen' numbers, and what with the elegant tracking shots of people walking or cycling or running down roads, you're left with the impression of Les Quatre Cents Coups directed by Woody Allen (if he had seen this film I wouldn't be surprised).

The war is just a distant murmur, though we do learn the school's been requisitioned, the boy's love object's boyfriend is with the Resistance, and a friend of the family - or acquaintance, anyway - has been shot.

Very successful and could actually be about any group of kids anywhere and at any time.

Beautifully shot by Arne Abrahasen and Claus Loof.

The boy's good - Ole Busck - but he didn't go into acting. With Kjeld Jacobsen, Astrid Villaume, Katja Miehe-Renard, Birgit Bendix Madsen, Yvonne Ingdal.




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