The White Reindeer

Reindeer Dames

The White Reindeer
aka Valkoinen peura
Finland 1952
Directed by Erik Blomberg
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some spoilerage included.

Subtitled on its introductory credits as A Story From Lapland, The White Reindeer is the first feature length movie directed and shot by former documentary short filmmaker Erik Blomberg. It also stars and was co-written by his wife Mirjami Kuosmanen, who plays the central protagonist/antagonist Pirita.

The film starts with a short and curious introduction where a sung legend of The White Reindeer is undercut by some footage of a random family denoting the early infancy of the title character (in actual fact), a song which effectively gives huge pointers (if not spoilers) to the following drama. We then, after this sequence, discover Pirita as she competes in a reindeer sled race and ends up as one of the two leaders with a man (played by Kalervo Nissilä) who stops his race to help her when her sled crashes. The two immediately fall in love and in the next scene we are already into the man asking Pirita’s parents for her hand in marriage and then, very quickly, by a kind of marriage ceremony, of sorts, which binds them together as man and wife. Her husband is a reindeer herder and the entire film is set in this small community of reindeer farmers.

However, when her husband gives her a baby white reindeer before he goes away with the herd for a couple of weeks to... well, to do whatever it is that reindeer farmers do... Pirita gets anxious he is already falling out of love with her. So she goes to see the local wizard who creates a written love potion for her. He tells her that, in order for her charm to work and make her irresistible to all the reindeer herders, she will have to sacrifice the first living thing which she meets on the way home. He accuses her of witchcraft however... and rightly so.. when her magic powers make his magical stone dance around by itself. And, it’s true... fortune is not her friend because, after she sacrifices the first thing she meets, the baby white deer she was given, to a local stone deer God (which looks kinda terrifying, actually), she turns into what I can best describe as a constantly shape shifting (and back to human form) being when she sometimes is just herself, sometimes The White Reindeer and, also often, a fanged vampire-like woman. In either identity, when she’s not taking advantage of the powers bestowed on her by the stone reindeer, she’s fearing for her own safety and alienating herself more from the local community. At some point, one wonders when any of the herders will realise that a spate of killings in a place they call Evil Valley might prompt them to just not go there anymore but, no, it’s certainly a movie which takes place in that fantastical realm where common sense is banished for long periods.

That’s all I want to say about the story but it’s a fantastic movie. Gorgeous, black and white cinematography in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio looks surprisingly breathtaking and big complements to Eureka Master Of Cinema for putting out what looks like a transfer of an amazingly clear print that, cliché or not, honestly makes it look like the movie was only shot last week (this is the same love and attention to releasing brilliant films that should be bestowed on the old US movie serials of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, I think... before it gets too late people!).

The film has a decidedly eerie aspect to it too. Starting off with almost a ‘meet cute’ kind of romantic comedy set up, the film suddenly turns on a dime into something far more sinister halfway through the scene where Pirita goes to visit the local mystic man for assistance. There’s also not a huge amount of dialogue in the movie, with vast stretches almost playing out like a silent film and, with some amazing actors (many of them not professional actors at all). Kalervo Nissilä and his fellow herdsmen are all very good in this but Kalervo Nissilä is astonishing, the lack of dialogue in certain scenes lending an almost ‘silent screen Goddess’ aspect to her character. This coupled with the powerful score by Einar Englund and an almost documentary authenticity to the various reindeer herding scenes really make this debut feature an astonishing ride. It also has a scene which reminds me of only one other I can readily think of when I watched this and I wonder if a certain, famous Italian giallo director saw this one as a boy...

Probably my favourite sequence in any Dario Argento movie takes place in his Suspiria sequel Inferno (reviewed by me here). In a music class, the main male lead of the film is bewitched in by the siren-like Mater Lachrymarum, aka The Mother Of Tears, where close ups of her face and the sheer force of her watchful presence transform the screen with a small sequence which gets under the skin and intrudes on both the character’s mind and also, I suspect, much of the audience. Well, The White Reindeer has a very similar scene where, at a wedding during the second half of the film, she is making her unearthly presence known to the groom who is in the process of getting married at the front of a church, from a pew a little behind the proceedings. It’s a marvellous scene and, for my money, worth the price of admission alone.

As are the extras which include, amongst a few things, a booklet essay by the always interesting Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and a commentary track (which I haven’t listened to yet) by Kat Ellinger. There is also one of the director’s early documentary shorts about reindeer farming which explains the process and which could almost have been lifted and placed into the film as is, it seemed to me. So, yeah, it’s a nice package for sure and I’d have to say that The White Reindeer is a fascinating slice of Finnish folk horror which would not have looked out of place in Severin’s wonderful All The Haunts Be Ours boxed set from last year. Well worth looking out for and, though I’d never even heard of this film until a couple of years ago when Eureka put it out, well... I’d have to say it’s a wonderful discovery for me, at any rate.