Cinema
The Unknown Soldier
Tuntematon sotilas
Edvin Laine · 1955
Synopsis
A company of Finnish machine gunners, from the days leading up to the Continuation War, in 1941, to the fighting of 1944. The men come from every province, speak their own dialects and are loyal only to one another. The film dwells on the first phase of the war, the advance, and passes more quickly over the long months of trench warfare, in which the soldiers argue over orders and survive.
Context
Based on the novel published in December 1954, whose rights were acquired by Suomen Filmiteollisuus, it was produced by T. J. Särkkä from a screenplay by Juha Nevalainen; the army at first refused its cooperation. Released on 23 December 1955, it ran for nearly three hours and was the most expensive production in the country up to that time. It won seven Jussi awards and received, in Berlin in 1956, the prize of the International Catholic Office for Cinema. Sold in more than forty countries, it has been shown on Finnish television every Independence Day since 2000.
Who it is for
A long film, in Finnish, in dialects that the subtitling flattens; one needs to know what the war of 1941 to 1944 meant for Finland.
Prizes and reception
The most-watched film in the history of Finnish cinemas, with 2.8 million admissions; in 1967, its first television broadcast reached half the country.