The Spies Who Did Not Come in from the Cold

From the mid-1940s to the end of the 1980s, the entire world was marked by the Cold War. Everywhere except in the Swedish film world, that is. It was like an iron curtain of its own, pulled down over Sweden and preventing Swedish film from dealing with larger, international issues or political discussions. But, there were exceptions where curtains were torn and agents could be seen roaming the streets of Stockholm as well.

Arguably, the Cold War broke out sometime around 1946. Winston Churchill’s speech in March that year, in which he described how an iron curtain had descended across the European continent, was a clear signal that East and West were no longer allies against a common enemy but opposed to each other. The Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948 became a tangible illustration of what the coming decades would look like. Almost immediately, these issues also began to become a theme for filmmakers. Jacques Tourneur’s Berlin Express (1948) is an early, exquisite example.

Sweden was also early in the game with High Tension (1950), directed by Ingmar Bergman after a screenplay by Herbert Grevenius. Bergman had just made Summer Interlude (1951), a much more traditional Bergman film (and one of his best), and now reluctantly, and only for financial reasons, agreed to do something audience-friendly. Later, due to various circumstances, High Tension was released in Sweden before Summer Interlude. The film deals with agents from the Soviet-like country of Liquidatzia, political refugees from across the Baltic Sea and the Swedish police. Ulf Palme plays Atkä Natas, the villain of the piece, (the strange name is “Äkta Satan” – True Satan – written backwards). But Bergman does not seem to have put much effort into the creation of the film. It’s a shame, because it had the potential to be as good as Fritz Lang’s similar thrillers about spies and double-dealings, but now it’s instead a half-baked concoction of silly dialogue, improbable coincidents and uninspired acting. Later, Bergman became increasingly uneasy with the film, not least about how it reduced the seriousness of the situation of the Baltic refugees, which may be one of the reasons why he later in his career banned the film from being shown. Few have seen it these days, and those who haven’t haven’t missed much.

The Baltic situation is also addressed in the completely different and partly documentary Baltutlämningen (‘The Extradition of the Balts,’ 1970), directed by Johan Bergenstråhle, after Per Olov Enquist’s book “The Legionnaires”. The course of events is slightly before the Cold War, but it can probably still be counted as an example of the theme of this article: Swedish films with connections to the Cold War.

Despite the fact that the Cold War dominated the political world and the description of international relations in the media, it wasn’t something that Swedish cinema dealt with. There’s probably a parallel here to how unusual it was with Swedish films about the war during the Second World War, and when it happened it was either in allegorical form or without specifying which war it was and who the combatants were (except for a couple of films about the Winter War in Finland 1939-1940) – which was largely due to the Swedish policy of neutrality. Making a film about the war, and especially taking a stand, was seen as a violation of this policy, and possibly there were similar thoughts about the Cold War. But it sometimes appeared in the plot, of course, not least in another film by Bergman: Winter Light (1963). The fisherman Jonas, played by Max von Sydow, has anxiety due to the world situation and the threat from nuclear weapons and war. His fears lead to him taking his own life.

Two other films in the similar thriller spirit of High Tension are Främlingen från skyn (‘The Stranger from the Sky,’ 1956), directed by Rolf Husberg, who also wrote the script together with Linda Larsson, and Den gula bilen (‘The Yellow Car,’ 1963) by Arne Mattsson. The former begins in the Swedish countryside where an airplane is shot down, which creates great commotion in the area. On board was a defected scientist (from the Soviet Union, we must assume) who is being chased by an agent. After a while, the action moves from the bogland to a train and then we wind up in a factory, the ironworks of Sandviken to be precise. It is a slightly languid but still somewhat exciting film where Husberg tries to make a Hitchcock thriller.

Mattsson’s film about the yellow car is part of his popular film series about private detective John Hillman, based on the book series by Folke Mellvig. The other films in the series, which also have colours in the titles, are all set in a specific place, but this sequel moves in on international big politics and is about an assassination attempt on Swedish soil on a president from an unnamed country (possibly Yugoslavia). The car in question is also the murder weapon and just like in Speed ​​(Jan de Bont, 1994), a bomb will explode if the vehicle travels too slowly. Hillman, as always played by Karl-Arne Holmsten, is of course readily present, but without his wife Kajsa (Annalisa Ericson) by his side this time around.

A slightly more curious contribution to the genre is Uppdrag i Korea (‘Assignment in Korea,’ Gunnar Höglund, 1951), a hybrid between documentary and feature film about a Swedish foreign correspondent played by Tord Andersén, and shot on location during the Korean War. Otherwise it was, as stated before, unusual for the Cold War to appear in Swedish film. Even films that deal with any part of the Swedish military, such as Ubåt 39 (‘Submarine no 39,’ 1952) by Erik Faustman, Gula divisionen (‘The Yellow Division,’ 1954) by Stig Olin, and Flygplan saknas (‘Aircraft Missing,’ 1965) by Per Gunvall, do so without involving the larger political context.

There have probably been more foreign productions about the Cold War where Sweden plays a small part than there have been Swedish Cold War films. Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966) ends, for example, with a sequence in Sweden, it is unclear where and not filmed on location, but Jan Malmsjö appears as a representative of the Swedish press. Paul Newman plays the lead, and also stars in another American spy thriller, The Prize (Mark Robson, 1963). It takes place entirely in Stockholm, and the prize in question is the Nobel Prize. But Newman’s literature laureate barely has time to receive his prize before he is forced to fight agents from the other side of the Iron Curtain.

To come full circle, there are a couple of connections to Bergman in The Prize. Newman’s character falls, like Atkä Natas in High Tension, from Katarinahissen, a freestanding elevator and a Stockholm landmark, but surprisingly enough with a less fatal outcome; and Lars Passgård, who plays the little brother Minus in Through a Glass Darkly (1961), also has a small role in The Prize. Such unexpected coincidences could also take place due to the Cold War.

(published in Swedish in June 2020 and in English in March 2021, translation by Jan Lumholdt)