Every nation must have its aristocratic film heroes. Even Finland, though spared from too much aristocratism by a combination of poverty, necessity, egalitarianism and sheer dumb luck, had Colonel (ret.) Rainer Sarmo alias Dettmann (hence the "dead man" of the title), a charismatic and sophisticated adventurer who grappled with "baddies and broads" in three popular films.
This first one was intentionally designed as a compelling and trendy thriller of the kind that Finland had not yet produced, with narrative complexities and low-key lighting borrowed from contemporaneous film noir. To a 21st century viewer, some of these attempts may now come across more as unintentionally elliptical story-telling and poor lighting. The actual story with its old scores, fake identities and villains with a barrage of code names is not terrible compelling or suspenseful to modern viewers either, no matter how pioneering it might have been in the 1940s.
They might get more joy out of the film's intentional, light-hearted comedy parts, and especially its unintentionally comic bits. The latter is mostly to do with the picture of the period the film tries to evoke, of cheerfully stuffy upper-class people with their servants and adherence to titles, and of Helsinki as a cosmopolitan centre of international intrigue. None of it feels exactly real, and not just because such crassly class-bound image of society is as alien as a visitor from another galaxy would be to Finns born in the last fifty years. The filmmakers were clearly trying to be on the bleeding edge of coolness and such attempts rarely transcend their own time without a few sniggers. For example, when the hero gets a drop on the crooks who have captured his friend, his first action is not to untie the ropes that bind the poor chap to a chair, but to give the man a cigarette, thus rescuing him from dangerous nicotine depletion! That's the way the alpha male operated in the 40s, or so the film would have you believe. The comic effect tends to get amplified by the actors' theatrical delivery, a style that was already dated back in the day. Everything seems just a bit off and unconvincing, an attempt to push the limits and create something new, with not quite enough resources or insight to pull it off. At least they gave it a good shot.
The film certainly did well in the box office, and the sequel, Kuollut mies vihastuu, followed in 1944. It was actually a tighter and more effective thriller, and, unlike the first film, which was made during the time of temporary peace, it reflected the real world situation of its day by pitting Sarmo against Soviet proxies. The final instalment, Kuollut mies kummittelee, appeared as late as 1952, but by then the world and the audience had moved on and no one really cared about the adventures of an aristocratic "dead man". However, Joel Rinne would go on to portray another memorable, though more down-to-earth crime fighter as the leading man in the classic series of much loved Komisario Palmu films.
