The Diary of a Worker (1967)

To be honest, I had lots of preconceived ideas about what The Diary of a Worker (dir. Risto Jarva) would be like. I thought it would be stiff, doll-like actors screaming their way through a phony manuscript. Well, you know, this is what Finnish movies are often like, not all the time, but often enough. Well, I was wrong. This was a great film, with lots of artsy surprises to boot, a Finnish attempt at nouvelle vague (in a good way). Diary of a Worker does not shy away from expressing some chunks of left-wing politics. Jarva shows a society undergoing some drastic changes (in the sixties, urbanization in Finland was still underway.) It's a film about work, class differences and ideas about family life. Two young people - a welder and a secretary - fall in love and the film chronicles their everyday struggles and their hardships - and all this with a sort of hard-boiled matter-of-factness. The guy takes a job in another city and the girl has difficulties at her job, and withdraws into herself. I am not sure how common this was for Finnish movies in the sixties (honestly, I don't know) but the film's portrayal of how the war (WWII) left traumatic traces both in people who fought in the war, and the generation who lived with their parents' silence and strange reactions is gritty and unsentimental. The same thing goes for how the film tackles political disagreements. Jarva does not depict differences of opinions, but differences in attitudes to life. And usually he does this quite successfully. This is a film I must watch again. The editing technique alone makes this film worth watching. AND: some great music, too!