In some respects Laila was typical of Norwegian films of the 1920s and 1930s, which tended to be literary adaptations with a nostalgic, romanticized image of rural life. The breakthrough film in this genre was Rasmus Breistein's Anne the Tramp (1920), which screened all over Norway and even among Norwegian immigrant communities overseas. As Gunnar Iversen points out, these films played a central role in the formation of a distinctive national cinema. This was all the more important for a country which had gained independence from Sweden only in 1905. But ironically, the film was made by a Danish director (George Schneevoigt) and the interiors where shot at the Nordisk Film studios in Copenhagen. The lead actors were similarly pan-Scandinavian: Mona Martenson was Swedish, as was Alice O'Fredericks; Tryggve Larssen was a Norwegian character actor who played in both Norwegian and Swedish films over the course of his career; and Peter Malberg was Danish.
The source material for Laila was a popular 1881 novel entitled From Finnmark: Descriptions by the Norwegian author J. A. Friis. As Tybjerg notes, the book was renamed Lajla (with a "j") in subsequent editions and translations, emphasizing its female heroine; this was true of the 1888 translation published in the U.S. by Putnam as well. While the film sticks closely to the novel's basic storyline, the novel also contains extended descriptions of Sami (Lapp) customs. Interestingly, one chapter is even devoted to the story of Ranne and Runne, twin dogs that belonged to Alsak Lagje, the wealthy Sami herdsman who takes in Laila as a child.
The author J. A. Friis was a university professor who studied Sami language and culture; according to Tybjerg, he was "the first university professor in Norway to hold a chair in the subject." His novel was even quoted as an authoritative source in an 1886 essay on the Sami in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Its somewhat romanticized view of the Sami as "noble savages" might appear dated today, but one should remember that Friis advocated for Sami rights at a time when there was a strong drive to assimilate them within Norwegian culture.
The film's director, George Schneevoigt (1893-1961), was born in Copenhagen to a Danish father and a Finnish mother. Schneevoigt lived with his mother for a time in Berlin before returning to Denmark, where he began work at Nordisk Films in 1915. Although he directed a number of films for the studio, he is probably best known today for the features which he photographed for Carl Dreyer: Leaves from Satan's Book (1921), The Parson's Widow (1920), Once Upon a Time (1922) and Master of the House (1925). In the early Thirties Schneevoigt directed the atmospheric literary adaptations The Vicar of Vejlby (1931), Hotel Paradis (1931) and Church and Organ (1931). Another of his films, the musical comedy Thirteen Years Old (1932), was styled after Rene Clair's early sound musicals in France.
The Oslo Archive's 2006 restoration of Laila is based on a 1974 reconstruction of the film by the producer Helge Lunde and film archivist Arne Pedersen. The current restoration started from a high definition scan of the duplicate negative created from an older German nitrate print. Among other things, the restoration team created new Norwegian-language intertitles. For the U.S. release prepared by Flicker Alley, the noted silent film accompanist Robert Israel is performing a score adapted from themes by the classic Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.
Producer: Helge Lunde
Director: George Schneevoigt
Script based on the novel by J. A. Friis
Director of Photography: Waldemar Christensen
Music: Robert Israel, based on themes by Edvard Grieg
Principal Cast: Peter Malberg (Aslak Lagje); Cally Monrad (Mor Lagje, Aslak's wife); Henry Gleditsch (Mellet, the Lagjes' foster son); Tryggve Larssen (Jampa); Finn Bernhoft (the Merchant Lind); Lily Larson-Lund (Lind's wife); Mona Martenson (Laila); Ibe Brekke (Magga); Harald Schwenzen (Anders Lind); Alice O'Fredericks (Inger); Aslag Aslagen Sara (Lasse); Rasmus Christiansen (Anders and Inger's father); Mattis Morotaja (Mellet as a boy).
BW-165m.
by James Steffen
Sources:
Friis, J. A. Lajla: A New Tale of Finmark. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1888.
Myrstad, Anne Marit. "National romanticism and Norwegian silent cinema," in Popular European Cinema, ed. Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau, pp. 181-193. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Neergaard, Ebbe. The Story of Danish Film. Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1963.
Soila, Tytti, Astrid Soderbergh Widding and Gunnar Iversen. Nordic National Cinemas. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.
Tybjerg, Caspar. "Laila," introductory essay to Laila (DVD). Flicker Alley, 2011.
Wengstrom, Jon. "Report from the Nordic Archive Meeting in Tromso, 7-9 September 2006." Journal of Film Preservation, No. 72, 2006: 81-86.
