Refocus the Films of Teuvo Tulio
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The Films of ReFocus: The International Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer and Gary D. Rhodes This series aims to produce new critical volumes from an interdisciplinary perspective which bring influential, yet neglected, international directors to the attention of a new audience of scholars and students in Film Studies. ReFocus ‘At long last – a book dedicated to one of Scandinavia’s most significant Tulio Teuvo The Films of directors of the twenty-first century: Susanne Bier. Addressing key works and developments of Bier’s career at home and abroad, Refocus: The Films of Susanne Bier is a significant milestone with contributions by some Teuvo Tulio of the most inspiring and insightful scholars of Nordic cinema today.‘ An Excessive Outsider Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Georgia Institute of Technology From early, lesser known films, such as Freud’s Leaving Home, to the Academy HENRY BACON, KIMMO LAINE AND JAAKKO SEPPÄLÄ Award-winning In a Better World and the recent hit BBC television series The Night Manager, ReFocus: The Films of Susanne Bier covers the entirety of the versatile Danish director’s oeuvre. Having worked in Scandinavia, Hollywood, and the UK, Susanne Bier is known for her industrial fluidity, moving confidently between genres and media. – all at a time when gender inequality in film ensures that women seldom sit in the director’s chair. BACON, KIMMO LAINE HENRY This book offers a timely consideration of Bier’s impressive authorial achievements AND JAAKKO SEPPÄLÄ and features dynamic essays from both recognised and up-and-coming scholars in Scandinavian, gender and sexuality, and transnational film and media studies. It concludes with an original interview with Bier, providing unique insight into the creative process of one of contemporary cinema’s prominent innovators. Missy Molloy is a Lecturer in Film Studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Mimi Nielsen is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. Meryl Shriver-Rice is the Director of Environmental Media at the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami, where she directs and teaches for the Abess Center’s Master’s program in Environment, Culture and Media. Cover image: Gael Garcia Bernal in No, Pablo Larrain (2012 Chile\France\USA) © Sony Pictures Classics/Photofesta Cover design: Stuart Dalziel 2402 eup Bacon et al_PPC.indd 1 24/02/2020 19:58 ReFocus: The Films of Teuvo Tulio 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd i 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM ReFocus: The International Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer, Stefanie Van de Peer and Gary D. Rhodes Editorial Board: Lizelle Bisschoff, Stephanie Hemelryck Donald, Anna Misiak and Des O’Rawe ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of international film directors, from the celebrated to the ignored, in direct relationship to their respective culture – its myths, values and historical precepts – and the broader parameters of international film history and theory. The series provides a forum for introducing a broad spectrum of directors, working in and establishing movements, trends, cycles and genres including those historical, currently popular, or emergent, and in need of critical assessment or reassessment. It ignores no director who created a historical space – either in or outside of the studio system – beginning with the origins of cinema and up to the present. ReFocus brings these film directors to a new audience of scholars and general readers of Film Studies. Titles in the series include: ReFocus: The Films of Susanne Bier Edited by Missy Molloy, Mimi Nielsen and Meryl Shriver-Rice ReFocus: The Films of Francis Veber Keith Corson ReFocus: The Films of Jia Zhangke Maureen Turim and Ying Xiao ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan Edited by Andrée Lafontaine ReFocus: The Films of Pedro Costa: Producing and Consuming Contemporary Art Cinema Nuno Barradas Jorge ReFocus: The Films of Sohrab Shahid Saless: Exile, Displacement and the Stateless Moving Image Edited by Azadeh Fatehrad ReFocus: The Films of Teuvo Tulio: An Excessive Outsider Henry Bacon, Kimmo Laine and Jaakko Seppälä edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/refocint 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd iiii 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM ReFocus: The Films of Teuvo Tulio An Excessive Outsider Henry Bacon, Kimmo Laine and Jaakko Seppälä 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd iiiiii 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Henry Bacon, Kimmo Laine and Jaakko Seppälä, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4215 2 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4216 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4217 6 (epub) The right of Henry Bacon, Kimmo Laine and Jaakko Seppälä to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd iivv 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM Contents The Authors vi Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Tulio and Traditions of Melodrama 15 3 Biography of an Outsider 40 4 Outsider as an Independent Filmmaker 52 5 All that Melodrama Allows –Tulio’s Films and Principal Obsessions 78 6 Exploring a Style of Passion 156 7 Art of Repetition 175 8 Tulio’s Legacy 196 Filmography 211 Index 218 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd v 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM The Authors Henry Bacon is professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Helsinki (2004–). Previously he has worked as a research fellow at the Finnish Film Archive (1999–2004), where he also acted as project manager in charge of designing a national radio and television archive. His major research interests are transnational aspects of cinema, how audiovisual experience relates to our perception and understanding of the natural and the social world, audiovisual narratology as well as film’s relation to other arts. He has also written exten- sively on the history of opera. From 2011 to 2014 he headed the A Transnational History of Finnish Cinema Academy of Finland research project, the results of which were published in Finnish Cinema: A transnational Enterprise (2016). Among his major publications are the monographs Luchino Visconti: Explora- tions of Beauty and Decay (1998), Audiovisuaalisen kerronnan teoria (Theory of Audiovisual Narration, 2000), Elokuva ja muut taiteet (Film in Relation to Other Arts, 2005) and The Fascination of Fictional Violence (2015). He has also published several articles in scholarly periodicals as well as anthologies such as Studi Viscontiani (1997), Narration and Spectatorship in the Moving Images (2007), Romy Schneider: Film. Rolle. Leben (2008), Morte a Venezia: Thomas Mann/Luchino Visconti: un confronto (2014), The Films of Aki Kaurismäki: Ludic Engagements (2018) and Screening Characters: Theories of Character in Film, Television, and Interactive Media (2019). Kimmo Laine is an acting professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku and a university lecturer of Film Studies at the University of Oulu. He has published two monographs and co-edited four books on film history in Finnish. In English, he has published in, for example, Film History, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd vvii 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM THE AUTHORS vii Studies, as well as in several edited collections including Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Cultures in the Global Marketplace (edited by Tommy Gus- tafsson and Pietari Kä ä pä , Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Finnish Cinema: A Transnational Enterprise (edited by Henry Bacon, Palgrave, 2016), Compan- ion to Nordic Cinema (edited by Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist, 2016) and A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925–1950 (edited by Fredrik Hertzberg et al., 2019). Currently he is working on a book-length study on Finnish film studios, to be published in the Global Film Studios series by Edinburgh University Press. Jaakko Seppä lä is a docent (adjunct professor) in Film and Television Studies at the University of Helsinki, where he works as a university lecturer. He is one of the editors of Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation (edited together with Linda Badley and Andrew Nestingen, 2020) and he has published arti- cles on Nordic cinema and television, often focusing on transnational and stylistic questions. He has contributed to anthologies including Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Cultures in the Global Marketplace (edited by Tommy Gustafsson and Pietari Kä ä pä , Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Finnish Cinema: A Transnational Enterprise (edited by Henry Bacon, 2016) and Aki Kaurismäki – Ludic Engagements (edited by Thomas Austin, 2018), and jour- nals including Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind. He is currently exploring style and meaning in Nordic noir in the context of welfare state criticism. 66354_Bacon.indd354_Bacon.indd vviiii 330/06/200/06/20 110:220:22 AAMM Acknowledgements This study was made possible by the kind support of the National Audiovisual Institute, Finland. In particular we wish to thank the Managing Director Matti Lukkarila for granting us the use of the entire Teuvo Tulio collection in the Institute’s possession, including all the surviving films and related materials. Among the many members of the personnel we especially want to thank are Timo Matoniemi, Tommi Partanen, Jorma Junttila and Juha Seitajärvi.