EXTENDED ABSTRACT
“Nationalism, War and Defeat,” Copenhagen 25–26 May 2023
Defeats on Screen
Reinterpreting War and the Nation in Finnish Postwar Movies in the 1940s and 1950s
Dr Ville Kivimäki, Tampere University, Finland, ville.kivimaki@tuni.fi
Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX)
https://research.tuni.fi/hex
In September 1944, Finland faced a definite, although not a total defeat in its Continuation War against the Soviet Union. The country had to cede large parts of its territory, pay large war reparations and abolish several political and civic organizations deemed anti-Soviet or fascistic. Formerly illegal Finnish communist party emerged strong in public life and gained wide popular support in the first post-war elections in March 1945. Finnish public discourse had to adapt to a new friendly and partly submissive rhetoric towards the Soviet Union. From September 1944 until September 1947, the Soviet-led Allied Control Commission had a final say in Finnish politics as well as in the most important military and economic matters.
Yet Finland remained unoccupied and retained its democratic political system. After the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947 and the Finnish-Soviet political agreement in 1948, the fear of an imminent Soviet invasion or a communist coup started to diminish. Latest after Stalin’s death in 1953, it was becoming clear that Finland would not be “Sovietized” like the Baltic states or the Soviet bloc countries in Central Europe. The experience of defeat began to be reinterpreted: in contrast to the desperate and resigned moods in 1944/45, in the 1950s the war and its outcome were given cautiously positive meanings as a successful defensive struggle for independence. Nevertheless, the situation remained politically volatile, and any revision of the war’s outcome had to be balanced with Soviet interests and reactions.
In these circumstances, fiction movies provided an indirect yet influential way to negotiate the experiences of defeat in public. In my paper, I will look at the Finnish fiction movies of the 1940s and 1950s and how they represented the war’s outcome in 1944, the consequences of defeat and the Finnish post-war nation. Rather than commenting on these issues directly, the movies made different kinds of implicit references to war-related events, political realities and nationally-charged symbols, feelings and places. As I will argue, this allowed for a subtle reinterpretation of the defeat and the post-war nation that was recognizable for the cinema audiences but avoided open confrontation with politically sensitive questions, which could risk being considered “anti-Soviet.” My sources consist of 22 full-length Finnish fiction movies from 1945 until 1958, selected by the rather loose criteria that they include references to the war or to its consequences.
The preliminary findings of my analysis can be summarized as follows: First, in the early post-war films, the war’s final stages and outcome were rarely discussed; yet the movies centered on many social and psychological problems that were linked to the past war experiences: the loosening of sexual morals, former soldiers’ maladaptation to civilian life, juvenile delinquency, venereal diseases, alcoholism. Drawing from the popular film noir genre, the experience of defeat materialized in weak and morally disoriented men and women of the war generation. There are very few references to the collective nation; it seems as if the defeat was rather a psychological condition. This reflects the general uncertainty about the new political realities and, consequently, how the Finnish nation and the recent wartime past should be addressed.
Things changed gradually in the 1950s: although the war continued to be understood in the context of defeat, the films started to include references to the nation’s survival, to soldiers’ sacrifices, and to the fact that the Finnish army was not defeated in the battlefield. In this process, some of the wartime rhetoric and discourses re-emerged and the war was again interpreted through national framing. It was a common technique, for instance, to re-use wartime propaganda film materials to make a cinematic reference to war. Another strong and popular method was the choice of music: by using emotionally-charged wartime songs and tunes that everyone recognized the films could subtly create patriotic connotations and interpretations. Nevertheless, in this process the Finnish nation was also re-imagined against the backdrop of a lost war. The nationalism of the Finnish 1950s movies was rather represented through implicit references than through explicit ideological discourse. For example by depicting weary but undefeated soldiers at the war’s end or by filming military cemeteries, the movies underlined collective sacrifice that took distance from the aggressive heroism of the wartime years.