Kalde spor

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Movie
Original title Kalde spor
Country of production Norway
original language Norwegian
Publishing year 1962
length 96 minutes
Rod
Director Arne Skouen
script Arne Skouen
Johan Borgen
production HC Hansen
music Gunnar Sønstevold
camera Ragnar Sørensen
cut Bjørn Breigutu
occupation

Kalde spor (English title: Cold Track ) is a Norwegian feature film in black and white from 1962 by director Arne Skouen . The world premiere in Norway took place on December 26, 1949. The film was selected as the best foreign language contribution at the 1963 Academy Awards , but received no nomination. It was also shown at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival .

action

Winter 1959. After a long stay in Australia, Oddmund Ronge returns to Norway. A taxi driver can take him to the end of a mountain road. There is a memorial stone for 12 fatally injured young people who perished in the mountains while fleeing from the German occupation forces. Despite all the warnings from the taxi driver, Oddmund sets out without food and only with skis to a high, half-ruined hut. He asks the taxi driver to brief the local police officer named Tormod about his company.

Once at the top, memories of the war year 1944 catch up with him. He had arranged to meet a group of twelve refugees at this hut to take them over the mountains to a boat on the Norwegian coast with a local guide named Ragnhild. However, Ragnhild is two days late, the good weather has meanwhile changed and so the group can only leave on the third day. A snow storm is raging. During the march, Ragnhild has to return to the hut, totally exhausted, her husband Tormod, who hurried after the group, helps her. It is now Oddmund's job to continue to accompany the group of refugees on their way through the mountains. However, he does not do this, but follows the two returnees out of jealousy. The group dies in a snowstorm without guidance. To commemorate them, a memorial stone will be erected after the war, on which under the list of their names it says: “The best die young”.

Fifteen years later, Oddmund, Ragnhild and Tormud meet again in this hut. Meanwhile a married couple, Ragnhild and the policeman Tormud have been informed by the taxi driver. They try to help their former comrade in his physical and emotional distress on the remote hut. Against the background of raging forces of nature, the catastrophe takes place again. Oddmund wants to report himself to Tormud and the three of them have a dramatic argument about forgetting, remembering, guilt and atonement. It quickly becomes clear that everyone bears part of the blame for the deaths of the refugees and that they are all still trapped in that highly charged love triangle that led to their irresponsible behavior during the war.

The film ends with Oddmund's death from frostbite, who tries to bring the shadows of the deceased to the coast in a kind of hysterical fever and has to fail again.

criticism

Kalde spor is one of the films with which Arne Skouen devoted himself to the time of the German occupation in Norway and to the Norwegian resistance. His films Nødlanding (1952), As far as the forces can (1957), Omringet (1960) and Kalde spor (1962) are among the most popular films of the post-war period in Norway. Skouen is less concerned with heroes than with average people who put themselves at the service of the cause and often threaten to fail when faced with the challenge. The latter is particularly evident in Kalde spor , in which the heroism of resistance and the innocence of its protagonists are explicitly questioned. Skouen makes extensive use of expressionistic stylistic devices that create something like a chamber film against the backdrop of hostile forces of nature.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Sundholm et.alt: Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema. Plymouth 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-7899-0 .
  2. ↑ Gunnar Iverson, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, Tytti Soila (eds.): Nordic National Cinemas . Routledge, New York 1989, ISBN 0-415-08195-5 .