Leftovers from the North
Pohjan tähteet (Bottenskrap)
Ce qui reste de l'Etoile polaire (French title)
Der Bodensatz (German title)

Available on DVD

Finland 1969 B/W 87min Filmituotanto Spede Pasanen Ky

****½

Comedy

cast: Vesa-Matti Loiri (Paavali Pohja), Simo Salminen (Törrönen), Spede Pasanen (Sinisanta), Ville-Veikko Salminen (Igor Lötjönen), Arja Saijonmaa (Merju Köykkä), Ere Kokkonen (Pöyhönen), Pirjo Pasanen (Ms. Hiiva), Hillevi Lagerstam (Räntäsalo), Veikko Sinisalo
credits: dir. Ere Kokkonen, script Spede Pasanen with Ere Kokkonen and Vesa-Matti Loiri, prod. Spede Pasanen, DOP Kari Sohlberg

Oh man, this is pure art! It's a story about making of an art film. The director (Loiri) is just a beginner and his cast... Well, they have their own problems. The director of photography is old professional... In one scene they forget him in the middle of nowhere when they are travelling to the next shooting place!

The best scene is a long drive shot which shows all the bad sides of one town (and the whole society). You wouldn't believe how much criminality you could set on one street of a little Finnish town! And when the producer comes... If he wants to do a western and not an art film or put his stupid relative in one extra part, the crew just have to kiss his arse.

TRIVIA: Spede Pasanen was really angry for the Finnish critics. His movies were not art, they said. This movie made critics even more cold for Pasanen's films. The state never gave him any money (without the state's money it's VERY hard to make a movie in Finland). Pasanen got even more angry and there was a time when he chopped his films with an axe. Some brilliant works were destroyed, but gladly there were few copies of some his early works and not everything was lost!
TRIVIA#2: The director of photography (Kari Sohlberg) got "the Finnish Oscar", Jussi.
TRIVIA#3: This movie seems to be also a parody of Finnish film called Kesällä kello 5 (This Summer at 5, 1963), where a young couple drives around and speaks about divorcing.

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