Years 1939-45 were dark years in all of Europe, including Finland which suffered from two devastating wars with the Soviet Union during those years. The political situation also affected the cinema of Finland more or less directly; of the movies produced in those years, many were lightweight comedies aimed to cheer people up while avoiding sensitive political subjects. One such rom-com is Jorma Nortimo's Perheen musta lammas from early 1941, the Interim Peace era.
A man in women's clothes has been a staple of the comedy genre for who knows how long, but the joke works the other way round too. Perheen musta lammas is the story of an orphaned office worker named Raili Wirma (Sirkka Sipilä) who moves into her own apartment from the custody of her three oppressive aunts. Soon she finds herself deep in debt and breaks up with her boyfriend Topi (director Nortimo), but gets an idea when she accidentally gets a job as an errand boy while being dressed as a guy for laughs. In order to make money for her creditors, she tries to maintain several false identities in different jobs – easier said than done.
The humour is not highly imaginative, but there are many amusing details in the movie anyway. Sipilä looks funny as a boy and pretty as a girl and certain supporting characters are fun too, for example Siiri Angerkoski as Raili's uncle's wife Salli (a former opera diva) and the trio of Raili's conservative aunts (Elsa Turakainen, Verna Piponius and Henny Valjus) who complete each other's sentences like Huey, Dewey and Louie in classic Donald Duck comics. Some cinematic techniques are more interesting than in many average old Finn-films: the surreal dream sequence and the clothes-changing scene in a moving elevator look cool, as does the semi-long take introducing the beauty parlour where Raili finds a job under a false name. Some moments are also a bit more risqué than expected from a movie of the era.
Nevertheless, I don't think the romantic plot lines work as well as the identity-related ones. Raili has three men trying to woo her, but the final relationship feels like an obligatory happy ending instead of a natural part of the story. Even so, Raili herself is an interesting character thanks to her openness to shady methods like stealing and deceiving in order to reach her goals. Still, she too has to taste her own medicine when an artist named Rautia (Joel Rinne) blackmails her into becoming a nude model for him. This plot detail in particular is actually surprisingly dark considering the rom-com premise, but in the end everything is resolved with no hard feelings, of course. I doubt a similar joke could be done in a modern comedy without accusations of sexism – attitudes do change over time.
In any case, as a whole I thought the movie is somewhat watchable and entertaining little comedy. It is not Jorma Nortimo's best film and I think funnier movies have been made in Finland and elsewhere, but if nothing else is on, Perheen musta lammas makes an alright pastime for 90 minutes.
