Hilmanpäivät

It's shopkeeper/fire chief Kalervo Verto's wife's, Hilma's Name Day, and Heikki, young judge has got invited.He leaves the party with the dispenser and the girl from post office.The girl from post office ends up in the house of the old judge, and stays there while Heikki is invited to see the fire with Kalervo.They and their driver Alpertti drive down to Vekkula only to find out later the fire is in Heikkilä.That and many more mishaps happen on the way.Matti Kassila's Hilman Päivät (1954) is based on Agapetus' novel.He won a Jussi for Best Direction and Aarre Koivisto got one for Best Set Design.Matti Ranin does a real nice job as Heikki.The girls, Aino Mantsas and Vieno Kekkonen are both wonderful.Tauno Palo is fantastic as Yrjö.Edvin Laine is in the part of his lifetime as Kalervo.His character is very tragicomic and it all comes out the best in the scene where he gets lost in the woods and he doesn't find his way back to the fireplace.And he gets all depressed wanting to leave the squad but gets all excited again when he hears about the new equipment the department has purchased.Kaija Paasi is terrific as his wife Hilma.Salli Karuna does a great job as Eeva.Oke Tuuri is very good as Alpertti.Tarmo Manni is great as Seppä Kipala.Pentti Irjala is hilarious as Paapa.Arvo Lehesmaa portrays Pharmacist.Leo Jokela is in a small part as Aske, man at the fire.This is most hilarious farce I have seen in a while.The scene where they get, by accident, to a place called Vekkula and there is the old man who can't hear well, not well at all.They scream their lungs out trying to find out where the fire is.And the post office girl is hiding in the judge's house and the dog, Rippe takes her shoe.Also romance can be found in the picture.The scene where Dispenser talks about her life to Heikki is most romantic scene.It's nice how Kassila has used the still frame, like he used in his latter films.This is a farce you will never forget!

Over his career in film, Matti Kassila directed many acclaimed classics of Finnish cinema, such as the four Inspector Palmu films (1960-69), The Harvest Month (1956) and Red Line (1959). Besides the serious dramas, Kassila also made several comedies out of which at least Radio tekee murron (1951) can be safely recommended to aficionados of older Finn-films. His 1954 farce Hilman päivät was part the 20 year anniversary repertoire of the studio Suomen Filmiteollisuus and hits home fairly funnily too.

The story is mostly set within one day in an unnamed rural village in the early 1930s. A young judge Heikki (Matti Ranin) arrives to the town and is quickly pulled into joining the local fire brigade led by an overachieving shopkeeper Kalervo (Edvin Laine). Two pretty girls, the pharmacist's assistant and the post office lady (Vieno Kekkonen and Aino Mantsas), also show interest in the handsome young man, but the romantic interludes come to an abrupt end when a fire breaks out in the village and Heikki has to join Kalervo in the attempts to put the flames out. This also causes the post office lady to get stuck in the judges' house with an ostensibly grumpy older judge Yrjö (Tauno Palo)...

The narrator's voice-over provides insight to the characters' future escapades, even utilizing freeze frames at one point, a technique that rarely goes wrong. The general style grows from a loud farce into a rom-com, but Kassila masters both approaches at ease (understandably, since he won the Director's Jussi Award for the film). I was never annoyed neither by the bumbling fire brigade's antics earlier on nor the romantic misunderstandings in the latter half of the story even though both parts could have gone wrong in many ways. Especially the scene with the hard-of-hearing old man in the house of Vekkula (Pentti Irjala) is hilarious despite featuring constant yelling which I usually dislike. Edvin Laine and Oke Tuuri are also great as the frustrated fire chief Kalervo and the laid-back chauffeur Alpertti respectively.

The women of the story are really beautiful, even though Vieno Kekkonen has a way smaller role than director Kassila's wife Aino Mantsas who plays the perky post office girl who pleasantly turns the plot into a not-so-clichéd direction I was worried it would be heading at. In addition, the raging fire sequences look pretty spectacular for an old Finnish film. To wrap up, Hilman päivät can be called one of the better Finnish comedies of its decade. It doesn't really offer anything groundbreaking or new, but what it does, it does well.