Cinema
Foreign Harbour
Främmande hamn
Hampe Faustman · 1948
Synopsis
Winter 1938. The Swedish cargo ship Castor waits in the Polish port of Gdynia to load coal for the voyage home; the crew pass the time in a seedy bar by the harbour. One evening, a stateless sailor tries to say something to the Swedes; he is thrown out, and he is found shot dead on the quay. The sailor Håkan meets Mimi, a young Jewish woman who has fled Germany and is harassed by the police. Then the company orders the captain to load crates of tinned food for Seville, which the sailors find very heavy.
Context
The film is based on the play by Josef Kjellgren, Okänd svensk soldat, written in 1938 and first staged at the Folkteatern in Stockholm in 1940; the screenplay is by Herbert Grevenius. Shot from February to June 1948 at the Sandrew studios, with exteriors in Turku, Finland, it has its characters speak Swedish, German, Polish, Finnish and English. The scene in which the crew sings The Internationale beside a grave has remained famous. Presented in competition at Cannes in 1949, the film was booed there as communist propaganda; in Sweden, the critics praised it.
Who it is for
Eighty-five minutes, in Swedish, with dialogue in several languages. It is worth knowing that in 1938 an international embargo forbade the delivery of arms to the Spanish belligerents.
Prizes and reception
Its director's best-known film, named best Swedish film of the year 1948.
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