Susanne

Sweden

Klubb Super 8

Swedish with English subtitles

If you expect that because this film is Swedish it will have lots of nude women, you’re going to be disappointed. It is more of a morality tale on the evils of defying your parents (who know what’s best). It shows what will become of you if you indulge in dreadful vices like smoking, dancing and listening to jazz music. If we are to believe the film you will finish up degraded, abandoned by almost everyone you knew, and pregnant. In many ways the morality issues are hammered so hard that it turns the film into a farcical comedy. It was made in 1960 and attitudes have certainly changed since then.

Susanne is a normal rather boring young teenager whose life is ruled strictly by her socialite parents. They rarely spend time with her but wish that she was a little warmer and would smile a bit. With selfish parents like that I can understand why she doesn’t. She has friends who seem to have a normal life and (shock ! horror ! ) boyfriends. So one day when her parents are off socialising again she goes into town to meet “the gang”.

A young mechanic called Olle is attracted to her, and she to him. At one meeting they go for a drive (very fast) and have a serious car crash. Olle is injured, Susanne is thrown from the car and is near death. She recovers but her personality has changed. She is now rude, slutty and disobedient. She still has one friend, Bibbi, but when she rejoins the gang even Olle is put off by her new personality. Inevitably she discovers sex and just as inevitably she becomes pregnant, as you do if you are unmarried. There is a lovely scene where her new boyfriend takes her for a motorbike ride along the railway tracks, apparently in the hope of aborting the baby. An oncoming train would have done a better job.

Her parents have disowned her for bringing disgrace on them but Susanne doesn’t really care. Olle sticks by her and marries her but it is hard work bringing up a baby and looking after a wife who still feels something is missing from her life.

Then something happens that makes her re-evaluate her life so they can all live happily ever after.

It sounds corny and terribly earnest and it is, but what would you expect from a film made by a doctor? It is still, however, an interesting film to watch. It’s naïve simplicity lifts it above the U.S. morality films of the same period and makes it a little more believable, or at least more entertaining. There is none of the sexploitation that marked so many U.S. films of this kind – not even a flash of nipple. It’s just a simple warning film to Swedish youth, not particularly well made, that is a bit of fun.

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