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BA Thesis in History Relocating Filmmaker Reynir Oddsson

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BA Thesis in History Relocating Filmmaker Reynir Oddsson BA Thesis in History Relocating Filmmaker Reynir Oddsson Interpreting the First Icelandic Compilation Film Veronika Guðmundsdóttir Jónsson Supervisor Valur Ingimundarson May 2020 University of Iceland School of Humanities History Relocating Filmmaker Reynir Oddsson Interpreting the First Icelandic Compilation Film BA Thesis Veronika Guðmundsdóttir Jónsson National ID: 271097-3799 Supervisor: Valur Ingimundarson May 2020 Abstract Despite gaining significant recognition for his narrative film Murder Story (1979), the filmmaker Reynir Oddsson has largely been overlooked in Icelandic film historiography because of the tendency to gloss over the “transition years” 1966–1977—following the first televised broadcast of the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RÚV) and before the creation of the Icelandic Film Fund. This thesis is an attempt to correct this gap and to “relocate” Oddsson by focusing on his documentaries The Occupation Years 1940–1945, Part I (1967) and Part II (1968) about Iceland during World War II. These documentaries, which were the first of their kind in Iceland, will be analyzed through a theoretical framework developed by Bill Nichols, a leading documentary film theorist. In addition, The Occupation Years will be put within a political contemporary context and evaluated as a contribution to Icelandic film history. The purpose is to explore Oddsson’s role as an innovator in Icelandic film history, to gauge the motives behind his documentaries, and to show how they were received in Iceland. It will be shown that as part of the historical compilation film genre, The Occupation Years are defined by Oddsson’s use of editing and sound mixing, which underscores a “politically correct” interpretation of this significant historical event in the sense that it accorded with the “official” version. 1 Ágrip Þrátt fyrir að hafa fengið ákveðna viðurkenningu fyrir gerð frásagnarmyndarinnar Morðsögu árið 1979 hefur kvikmyndaframleiðandinn Reynir Oddsson í raun gleymst í íslenskri kvikmyndasögu. Þessi ritgerð er tilraun til þess að fylla upp í það skarð með því að endurmeta stöðu hans með sérstöku tilliti til hinna lítt þekktu heimildamynda Hernámsárin I (1967) og II (1968), en þær hafa þá sérstöðu að vera fyrstar sinnar tegundar á Íslandi. Við greininguna er stuðst við aðferð sem sett var fram af einum helsta kenningarsmiði heimildamyndagreiningar, Bill Nichols. Að auki verða heimildamyndirnar settar í pólitískt samhengi þess tíma sem þær voru gerðar og lagt mat á hlutverk þeirra í kvikmyndasögu Íslands. Markmiðið er að skoða Reyni Oddson sem frumkvöðul í íslenskri kvikmyndagerð, meta tilgang þess að heimildarmyndirnar voru framleiddar og hverjar viðtökurnar urðu á Íslandi. Færð verða rök fyrir því að Reynir hafi beitt ákveðinni aðferð í klipppingu og hljóðblöndun til að draga upp mynd af hernámi Íslands sem undirstrikaði þá pólitísk túlkun sem lá heimildarmyndunum til grundvallar og rímaði við afstöðu stjórnvalda. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Ágrip .......................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 4 Historicizing the Icelandic Documentary ................................................................................ 6 Iceland-films: Education and Promotion ............................................................................................ 8 Who Is Reynir Oddsson? .................................................................................................................. 10 Theorizing The Occupation Years .......................................................................................... 12 The First Icelandic Compilation Film ............................................................................................... 15 The “Voice” of The Occupation Years ............................................................................................. 17 Reynir Oddsson and the Expectations of a Nation ................................................................ 19 “A Disreputable Film”: Film Critics on The Occupation Years ....................................................... 20 The Director’s Response ................................................................................................................... 22 (Re)Locating Reynir Oddsson: Where Are the Historical Documentaries? ..................................... 24 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 25 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 27 3 Introduction As much as Icelanders themselves were taken by surprise by a fleet of British soldiers on May 10, 1940, the viewers of Reynir Oddsson’s two-part documentary The Occupation Years I (1967) and II (1968)1 are blasted with images of the rise of the Nazi regime in the early 1930s.2 A demure image of the Icelandic countryside showing the island nation’s poverty is quickly interrupted with newsreels of Europe at the start of a world war. A narrator recounts the first years of the British occupation of Iceland, all the while giving us a glimpse into the lives of Icelandic citizens under occupation. However, the bulk of the narrative focuses on the antics of the occupying forces themselves, not the experiences of Icelanders. It was a fact that did not go unnoticed by the Icelandic viewing public in the late 1960s. With The Occupation Years, Oddsson—an independent documentary filmmaker— had decided to take on a seminal event in Icelandic history. What was more, it coincided, in 1967, with a continued foreign military presence in Iceland, which was rooted in the controversial 1951 U.S.-Icelandic Defense Agreement. By selecting such a hot topic, Oddsson’s documentaries assume a dual role. On the one hand, it is a straight-edged historical documentary on the first occupation years with the use of interviews and borrowed newsreel footage. On the other hand, The Occupation Years is also a testimony to the state of the Icelandic film industry in a period when it was mostly inactive.3 The films are in a way “stuck between the two poles of history and fiction”4—or at the intersection of history and entertainment.5 Not much has been written about Icelandic film history, let alone the history of Icelandic documentaries. In his introduction to the 2019 fall issue of Ritið journal, Björn Þór Vilhjálmsson acknowledges the gap in the historiography of Icelandic film.6 In 1999, Guðni 1 Hernámsárin I and II, directed by Reynir Oddsson (ReykjaVík: United Motion Pictures, 1967/68). Henceforth, the films will be referred to as a whole The Occupation Years unless otherwise specified as Part I or Part II. A shortened combined Version of the film is aVailable for viewing at the National Film Archives of Iceland. HoweVer, it is unknown when this version was premiered or where it may have been shown and as such will not be analyzed here. 2 Donald E. Nuechterlein, Iceland: Reluctant Ally (New York: Cornell University Press, 1961), 23. 3 Björn Þór Vilhjálmsson, “Frá sVeitabænum að stafrænu byltingunni: Inngangur að þema,” Ritið 19, no. 2 (2019): 1. 4 Þorsteinn Helgason, “Sagan á skjánum,” Saga XL, no. 2 (2002): 45. 5 Þorsteinn Helgason, 42. 6 Björn Þór Vilhjálmsson, “Frá sVeitabænum að stafrænu byltingunni,” 1–3. 4 Elísson edited the colossal (1,009 page) Heimur kvikmynda,7 which remains the only comprehensive collection of academic writing on Icelandic film history. Only a portion of it, however, is dedicated to Icelandic film. What is more, no academic works focus solely on this “transition period” in Icelandic film history, spanning the years from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.8 The breadth of research has been dedicated to the earliest beginnings of Icelandic cinema and so-called “Iceland-films” (Ice. Íslandsmyndir) while some light has been cast on the history and ramifications of the cinematic “spring” (Ice. kvikmyndavorið) in 1980 in the wake of the founding of the Icelandic Film Fund.9 With regards to the documentary form of filmmaking, Icelandic film historiography gets even thinner, mostly concentrating on documentaries made for television, not for theatre release, as historian Þorsteinn Helgason has pointed out.10 Björn Ægir Norðfjörð has recently tried to shed light on a resurgence of Icelandic produced documentaries in the new millennium, but, again, little attention is devoted to the years in which Reynir Oddsson was most active despite the relative scarcity of Icelandic filmmakers in general.11 There is no doubt that Oddsson and his documentary films are uncharted territory in terms of Icelandic film historiography. How then, can we configure Oddsson and The Occupation Years into Icelandic film history and, more importantly, what was his intent behind its production? In this thesis, I will attempt to fill in this historical gap by “relocating” Oddsson in Icelandic film history, sketching out his impact on Icelandic film history by focusing, in particular, on the production of The Occupation Years. Before analyzing Oddsson’s work, I will try to contextualize it by looking at the state of Icelandic film history and its development.
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