{"title":"Arousing the audience: The two-peak structure of drama film trailers","authors":"M. Thomsen, L. Heiselberg","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00013_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00013_1","url":null,"abstract":"Film trailers are considered the most important marketing tool for a feature film; however, they have rarely been discussed in audience research. This article examines audiences’ emotional responses to film trailer content based on an exploratory study using skin conductance to measure emotional arousal as well as self-reports on recall, evaluation and the desire to see the film. The results indicate that it is not the overall level of arousal that is likely to affect these factors, but instead a specific pattern of arousal that allows variation and build-up to memorable scenes. Based on the analysis of four drama film trailers, we suggest that a two-peak structure provides an optimal arousal curve.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"45-65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/jsca_00013_1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42094541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Acts of remembering, acts of forgetting: Architecture, memory and recovery in Oslo, August 31st","authors":"Benjamin Bigelow","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00011_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00011_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the ways Joachim Trier represents memory in Oslo, 31. august (Oslo, August 31st) (2011), arguing that the film depicts a conflict between an individual’s attempt to forget (through addiction recovery) and the persistence of cultural memory. The film centres on Anders’s inability to move on from his addiction and imagine a future for himself in the face of an overabundant archive of cultural memory that situates him as an addict. One of the techniques Trier uses to represent the omnipresence of this ‘mnemonic energy’ on-screen is to visually associate memory with Oslo’s urban landscape, revealing the ways architecture ‘frames’ and circumscribes Anders’s attempt at constructing a new self through recovery. By depicting the individual’s interface with cultural memory as an immersive experience of wandering through a modern cityscape dominated by architectural structures, Trier shows how difficult recovery can be for an individual embedded within them.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"7-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47836118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nordic noir vs. spies in the cold: The reception of Scandinavian TV and film adaptations in Germany","authors":"J. Hindersmann","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00004_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00004_1","url":null,"abstract":"Scandinavian crime novels and their adaptations as TV dramas and films, commonly known as Nordic noir, are very popular in Germany. Nordic noir often has a political content and when spies appear, they are usually portrayed negatively. Scandinavian spy novels and their adaptations, on the other hand – with the exception of Guillou’s Coq Rouge series – never reached wide audiences in Germany.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44051339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"German surveillance of the Swedish film market during World War II","authors":"E. Stjernholm","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00008_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00008_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article approaches the subject of German film policy in Sweden during World War II from a new perspective. While several film scholars have mapped the connections between the German and Swedish film industries in the past, less is known about the German surveillance of Swedish film criticism, Swedish cinema audiences and Allied newsreel competitors. Drawing on previously overlooked archival material from the German film company Ufa’s Swedish subsidiary, digital newspaper archives and previous research on German film strategies abroad, this article offers new insights into the ways Ufa monitored the film market in neutral Sweden.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41598266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Casablanca of the North? Stockholm as imagined transnational setting in the British spy thriller Dark Journey","authors":"Tobias Hochscherf","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00007_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00007_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines the largely forgotten British émigré film Dark Journey, its Swedish setting and Scandinavian release. The spy drama, which tells the story of German and French secret agents in Stockholm during World War I by mixing thriller elements with romance, raises a number of questions regarding the representation of spies in a Scandinavian context, Sweden as a contested film market in the later 1930s and the transnational production strategy of films made at the Denham studios in Britain. It is one of the films that helped the profession of secret agents to change its image from a dingy and unchivalrous activity to an adventurous, illustrious and cosmopolitan enterprise. Interestingly, the film offers a very positive portrayal of its German protagonist, played by Conrad Veidt, that is at odds with other Anglo-American spy films but not at all uncommon for Swedish spy fiction.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44022761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"German pressure: Spy films and political censorship in Norway, 1914–40","authors":"Rolf Werenskjold","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00009_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00009_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the relationship between spy films, political censorship and Norwegian foreign policy during the period from 1914 to 1940. Espionage was a popular topic in Norway during this era, both in the news media and as a theme in fictional dramas. Based on a survey of the vetting of 57 spy films, both silent and sound, by the state censorship board, the article focuses on the Norwegian government’s hidden role in political film censorship throughout the period. While Norway’s Constitution and film censorship statutes provided no legal foundation for political censorship, there is nonetheless ample evidence that it took place. The article concludes with an in-depth analysis of the process of banning the US film Confessions of a Nazi Spy in July 1939, the German involvement in that process, and the subsequent effort to change the censorship law to reflect what was happening in practice.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42194733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"M.I.A.: Actors, acting and Swedish superspy Carl Hamilton","authors":"C. Holmlund","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00005_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00005_1","url":null,"abstract":"Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton is the best-known of Swedish fictional spies – in Scandinavia at least. The brain child of novelist Jan Guillou, Hamilton is Sweden’s James Bond or Dirty Harry. Five prominent Swedish actors – Stellan Skarsgård, Peter Haber, Stefan Sauk, Peter Stormare and Mikael Persbrandt – have played the spy on-screen, yet unlike Sean Connery and Daniel Craig as Bond or Clint Eastwood as Harry, their performances have been largely unnoticed, even in Sweden. This article studies their acting with two goals in mind: (1) to show how actors have shaped Sweden’s best-known secret agent on film and for TV, and (2) to elucidate how their acting decisions respond to genre customs and constraints. In conclusion I comment on why the screen Hamiltons have not found audiences outside Scandinavia and indicate ways that transnational action genres have helped reshape Swedish culture, transforming one of its national icons, Hamilton, in the process.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48871453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The spy who loved me: Benjamin Christensen and the Danish silent spy melodrama","authors":"Casper Tybjerg","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00003_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00003_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the spy melodrama films produced in Denmark from 1909 to 1918, 21 in all. The best-known (and one of only two to survive) is Benjamin Christensen’s Det hemmelighedsfulde X (Sealed Orders) (1914). A coda will briefly discuss the only pre-1945 spy talking film, Damen med de lyse Handsker (The Lady with the Light Gloves) (1942), also directed by Christensen. The article employs an approach similar to James Chapman’s contextual film history, examining the Danish silent spy melodramas in the context of political climate and genre, but with an emphasis on the concerns of film producers and practitioners. Surviving plot summaries, which exist for all 21 films, reveal a considerable degree of consistency in the storylines. The article argues that the melodramatic elements found in nearly all the films suggest a more female-oriented audience appeal than that of many later spy fictions.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49425513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}