Denmark
, 85 min
Shown in 1966
CREDITS
- dir
-
Annelise Meineche
- scr
-
Bob Ramsing
- cam
-
Ole Lytken
- mus
-
Ole Hoyer
- cast
-
Ole Soltoft, Ghita Norby, Bodil Steen, Ole Monty, Susanne Heinrich, Lily Broberg, Ingolf David, Hugo Herrestrup
- prod co
-
Palladium of Copenhagen
- source
-
Peppercorn-Wormser Inc.
-
COMMENTS
SFIFF screening preceded by David O. Selznick Awards presentation.
OTHER
This is not a Scandinavian version of the Booth Tarkington novel, but a screen adaptation of a famous novel by Carl Erik Soya. The film describes the sexual education of a 17-year-old high school boy during his summer holiday in Nybro, a small town in the provinces. Shown out-of-competition at Cannes, “17” was an unqualified critical success, perhaps because it is so unselfconscious, effortlessly correct and thoroughly humanistic. Here is Berhman's summer-night world aburst with nostalgia, bawdy humor and lyricism—joyously performed and filled with merriment. Since it is also a period piece (1913), the woman director, Annelise Meineche, has drenched it in brilliant pastel colors so that the Rabelaisian aspect of young Jacob's amorous exploits would maintain a sense of exaggerated wonder and miraculous shock. Ironically, the film's healthy exuberance is a rarity in American cinema, so that the sex comedy is a genre that has become lost or, whenever attempted, emerges as a giant, cinematic leer. There is an object lesson to be learned by filmmakers from watching “17”, and that is to treat the loss of innocence with respect, a sense of humor and an awareness of the discomfiting bliss of adolescence. The preponderance of attractive young ladies and tempting servants adds a highly farcical touch to the story. And Ole Hoyer's musical score makes the entire work move to the strains of a melodic arabesque which becomes, in an exaltative sequence of the hero's night-flight across the countryside, an anthem to Nature's ultimate mystery, totally clarified.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #147
The Coppola clan (Francis, Eleanor, Sofia and Roman) is the family with the most filmmakers represented at the Festival. Films screened include Apocalypse Now (1990); One from the Heart (1990); Lick the Star (1998); The Virgin Suicides (2000); CQ (2002); and On the Set of CQ (2002). (And that’s not even counting onscreen appearances by cousins Nic Cage and Jason Schwartzman.)
