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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Staying in Or Getting Out. Different Approaches to Character in Danish and Swedish Multiple Version Comedies of the 1930s
Text.Serial.Journal
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2005-03-01
2022-10-29
2005-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Niels Henrik Hartvigson
2005/03/01
Københavns Universitet
2036-461X
6
en
Staying in Or Getting Out. Different Approaches to Character in Danish and Swedish Multiple Version Comedies of the 1930s
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STAYING IN OR GETTING OUT.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO CHARACTER IN DANISH
AND SWEDISH MULTIPLE VERSION COMEDIES OF THE 1930S
Niels Henrik Hartvigson, Københavns Universitet




  The multiple version film represents unique material for a comparative aesthetic
analysis. This case study is an opportunity to explore different comic character strate-
gies in two multiple version films: Frk. Møllers Jubilæum (Miss Møller’s Jubilee, 1937,
Denmark), and Julia Jubilerar (Julia Jubilates, 1938, Sweden).
  So as not to mislead my readers, I should start by saying that I shall not be discussing
the differences between these films in terms of nationality. Rather, my analysis will be
devoted to questions surrounding the comic characters themselves.
  Both films were made by Alice O’Fredericks and Lau Lauritzen Jr., the directorial team
who in many ways was the personification of modern Danish comedy. The male love
interest in the films, Peter/Erik, is in fact played by Lau Lauritzen Jr., who performs sim-
ilarly in both films. The female love interest (Grete/Gretha), is also very closely matched
in terms of character in each version. Finally, the films use the same storyline as well as
the same locations.
  While there are an abundance of similarities between the films, the title character of
Miss Møller/Julia is handled very differently in each film. The Danish film becomes an
aggressive, tongue-in-cheek farce as opposed to the Swedish version, which is a much
gentler comedy.


Gently Does It

   Julia Jubilerar stars Katie Rolfson in the leading role as an old maid accountant, who
invites two colleagues on a skiing trip. One is the goofy Mårton, played by popular actor
Thor Mondéen. He has repeatedly asked her to marry him over the past twenty years,
but received a negative response every time. The other is the parentless Gretha, for
whom Julia wants to find a nice young man, so that she won’t end up a spinster like her-
self.
   The film’s exposition scenes are set up so as to reflect the different sides of Julia. She
is shown to be strict, responsible, and unfeminine. Even though the narrative possibil-
ities are slight and only point to a rather crude stereotypical conception of the spin-
ster/accountant, actress Katie Rolfson’s performance makes her character believable
and at times touching. In clear opposition to her acting style, Mondéen’s Mårton is a
goofy, one-dimensional stereotype.
   When Julia and Mårton discuss Julia’s unfulfilled dreams in the beginning of the
film, Julia contemplates that she could have married and had a daughter Gretha’age. To
this Mårton remarks that he has asked her to marry him many times, but that she has

CINEMA & Cie, no. 6, Spring 2005                                                          ­71
NIELS HENRIK HARTVIGSON




always refused him. Julia replies that she was young and full of dreams, but that now
she is old and it’s too late. Mårton comments that it has been good to have remained
friends all along, to which Julia retorts: “But it’s not enough! Every woman needs a hus-
band and a child.” She concludes by proclaiming that they must find a suitable man for
Gretha.
  Here Rolfson certainly strives for a depth of character as she displays her feelings and
the reasons for them. Small things such as her glances and her hesitations, point to a
character’s inner life and lend conviction to the lines.


Aggressive Characterisation

  For the Danish version, Alice O’Fredericks and Lau Lauritzen Jr. cast the reigning queen
of the popular revue, Liva Weel, to play Miss Møller. Like her Swedish counterpart, Liva
Weel plays a sad woman with no romantic past. In this film, however, the spinster/accoun-
tant characterization has been given excessively conceived in order to achieve a comical-
ly grotesque quality, rather than to evoke a believable, female stereotype.

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  The popular entertainer Børge Rosenbaum, who later went on to achieve worldwide
fame under the name of Victor Borge, plays her colleague Asmussen.
  Weel and Rosenbaum play Miss Møller and Asmussen as pure caricatures, some-
times overplaying the roles to the point of absurdity. They are constantly shown to be
incapable of corporeal and vocal control, as is evident in Miss Møller’s hysterical gig-
gles, and Asmussen’s awkward grunts.
  Their acting is underlined by a graphic stylisation of their appearances whereby
their stereotypes are virtually drawn on them. Hair, make-up, and costumes give Miss
Møller’s spinster a look of constant grimness, while Asmussen’s goofy and timid
bachelor is effectively and relentlessly evoked by a cartooish hairdo and artificially
raised eyebrows.
  This aggressive characterization may certainly work against any grain of sense and
sincerity that might be found in the story, but, as we shall see, it is part of a larger
strategy of comic characterization.
  In a scene that is parallel to the one with Katie Rolfson discussed earlier, we
encounter a shift to a musical number wherein Miss Møller laments her anti-roman-
tic plight. This number is the first of several instances that demonstrates a signifi-
cant shift in her character’s portrayal. As soon as the extra-diegetic music is heard,
we witness a change in voice and acting style that signals the film’s shift to a poeti-
cally stylized version of the old maid. This beautiful, melodramatic song portrays
Miss Møller’s stereotype with a completely different dramatic resonance of sinceri-
ty. In this moment, it is as if light seems to shine on her though a prism that allows
us to indulge in another character who is nevertheless the same person.
  Liva Weel’s character could have never spoken convincingly of lost opportunities
as can Katie Rolfson’one, in part because the melancholy of her statements would
have simply been lost when played out in caricature. However, the lyricism found in
the musical mode allows Weel to reveal the sadder side of her stereotypical portray-
al without any dependence on realism. In one song, her character symbolically uses
the stages of a flower’s existence whereby death becomes a surprisingly strong
theme: the flower, like herself, was a bud that grew and finally withered. In the sec-
ond verse, she reminisces about Asmussen’s clumsy proposals and how she let him
down. The chorus goes: “It’s hopeless to wish for past to come back, ’cause we’re not
young any more. Even though you didn’t win my heart, you’ll always have me as a
friend.”
  Here, Liva Weel is allowed to use her fictional character to showcase her signature
talents as an actual performer. It may be argued that Weel’s acknowledgement of the
audience during both of her numbers in the film support a non-fictive star perform-
ance, although such an acknowledgement is surely a commonplace in comedies.
  As soon as the song is over, she falls promptly back into her caricaturized perform-
ance, which marks a shift in characterization.


Character as Locus for Performance and Spectacle

  In the film, Miss Møller and Asmussen are depicted in several grotesque situations.
Filmed in fast motion, the actors perform acrobatic stunts with the aid of body dou-
bles, which provides a playfully wild and poetic dis-unity to the characters’ dimen-

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NIELS HENRIK HARTVIGSON

sion of talent. More precisely, for Miss Møller and Asmussen, character serves as a
locus for performance and spectacle. In this sense, a unified psychology or identity is
secondary.
  In the musical skating scene, for example, Weel seems to strive for a continuity
between acting and performance. As we see in her close-ups, Weel expertly integrates
her giggles and involuntary movements into her singing, making her performance
compatible with her caricature. But again the film chooses to challenge her charac-
ter’s unity. In the long shots, we remark what is clearly a body double for a whole new
Miss Møller, who is capable of performing artistic figure skating that is perfect to a
fault. As we also find in Asmussen’s character, there is a discrepancy between his out
of control caricaturization and a controlled body double who elegantly masters the
clumsy art of not being able to skate.
  In this scene Miss Møller’s and Asmussen’s identities are shells for the performance
of stunts. On this comic scale, characterization disappears. This also holds true in the
skiing scene that culminates with a shot of a stunt version of Miss Møller whose head
is buried in the snow, her legs protruding.
  The situation is very different in the Swedish version. In the skating scene stunt
doubles are also (presumably) used, but it is striking how invisibly the film transi-
tions between actor and stunt double. The flawless cuts create the illusion that Julia
and Mårton are expert skaters which, if performative unity is the goal, makes for a
much more satisfying performance.
  In terms of aggressive characterization, Thor Mondéen’s Mårton in the Swedish ver-
sion is very much on par with Møller and Asmussen. However, his character has
nowhere near the performative diversity of his Danish counterparts.

  Both films open with Asmussen/Mårton trying out pianos in the company store-
room.
  Mondéen uses his clumsy charm, which corresponds with his stereotype, as he
pounds away on two pianos. Børge Rosenbaum, for whom the number was designed,
delivers a performance of musical precision as he takes on six grand pianos with two
deft hands and an office chair. Whereas Mondéen, in the Swedish version, never
strays far from character, there is a whole different sense of performance and specta-
cle in Rosenbaum’s playing, thus a greater clash between the expert performer and
the nitwit caricature of Asmussen.


Baroque vs. Discrete

  In the pivotal roles of the Danish film, we have two comic characters whose
extremely different stylistic and performative upstrategies make the characters at
times grotesques, at times musically melodramatic. Sometimes the actors’ signature
talents shine trough the fictive characterization. At other times, the antics of anony-
mous body doubles invade the characters.
  Frøken Møller’s Jubilæum is a baroque film which pushes its fiction to the limits by
constantly revealing the very signs of fiction and genre.
  The actors in Julia Jubilerar do not change nearly as much as their Danish counter-
parts. In fact, it seems that they do not stray once they are placed within certain lim-

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its of characterization. Julia Jubilerar thus becomes a comedy that is closer to a uni-
fied norm in which characterization is redundant, whether or not the caricature,
albeit stereotyped, has any depth.
  The point of this case study has been to explore different approaches to the comic
character and to explain the difference these approaches create in two parallel films.




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