In the tense lead-up to the final law exams, student Martta (Helena Kara) takes private lessons from her secret fiancé Juho (Unto Salminen), who happens to be the son of the examiner, Professor Karsta (Uuno Laakso). In an oral exam alongside three other students, Martta performs the best, but the professor puts her through unfairly hard questions, including some topics that were not even on the curriculum.
At graduation, Juho gingerly introduces his fiancée to her father-in-law-to-be, who cringes that she can re-sit the examination after all. But two years later, when Martta and Juho are happily married, it’s Juho that now opposes her seeking further qualifications. He argues that Martta is the mother to a young child and that consequently she should give up any further qualifications in law. Instead, she pursues a junior magistrate’s position that will allow her to advance further up the ladder.
Judge Schroderus (Aku Korhonen) is mildly scandalised to find that one of his benchmates is a woman. “The world is truly upside down when women sit in judgement and men look after children.” But despite cavils from man of the other legal men present, Martta is sworn in on her first case, in which the young Hedvig (Mervi Järventaus) is accused of manslaughter for shooting her would-be rapist, who was also her fiancé’s Dad.
The courtroom drama that unfolds would never happen today, because half the participants would have to recuse themselves. The prosecutor knows the accused and the victim, and went to college with both Martta and Hedwig’s boyfriend. When prosecutor Väiniö (Sasu Haapanen) realises Hedwig acted in self-defence, he drops the charges, leaving Martta’s role in all this somewhat oblique. All she really does is read out the verdict, which itself has been pre-empted by the prosecution’s own admission.
Martta hears that her son has fallen down the stairs under Juho’s care, and she rushes from the court to his bedside. “It was there in court that I finally learned what a woman’s role is,” she simpers. “I would never have forgiven myself if I had lost my child because of a bit of ambition.” Feeling awful that she has left her child in the hands of her incompetent husband, she turns to the camera and harangues the audience: “Mothers, do not leave your small children!”
Well, that was awkward, and I suspect that screenwriter Martti Larni found writing Tuomari Martta awkward, too. There were multiple cuts to the film in progress, particularly as producers got cold feet about the way that its pre-war message might hit with a mid-war audience. The most obvious result is Martta’s final, impassioned plea directly into the camera, which is tight on her face because it was the third re-take, and the set had already been dismantled.
It was based on Ilmari Turja’s successful stage play from 1938, but times had very obviously changed in the five years since. At some point, maybe the same time that the similarly hectoring Born a Healthy Girl (1943) went into production at rival studio Suomi-Flimi, it must have seemed like a no-brainer to reunite the principal cast, as the film largely did. Laakso, Korhonen and Rinne all reprise their stage roles, although the director’s wife, Helena Kara, is parachuted in to replace the stage’s Kyllikki Väre, who is rather spitefully recast as Martta’s dowdy housekeeper, Mrs Kunttu. In another moment of meta-playfulness, Martta announces she is off to the flicks to see My New Life – the person she is telling is Unto Salminen, who starred in it.
The press could not agree whether the film had liberated itself from its theatrical origins. Olavi Vesterdahl in Aamulehti thought that the location shooting broadened the feel of the story. But Paula Talaskivi in the Helsingin Sanomat was having none of that: “The screenwriter has failed to capitalise on the inherent dynamism of the plot; instead, the scenes are arranged largely within the same four walls to which the stage play was confined.” That seems a little harsh, bearing in mind that courtroom dramas inevitably play out indoors, but there was no pleasing that Paula. Salama Simonen in Uusi Suomi voiced what everyone was really feeling, which was that the film’s message fell short in times when women were really casting aside traditional gender roles in the war effort, and that the whole thing came across as preachy and a little half-hearted.
Eighty-three years later, the best thing about this film is Mervi Järventaus as Hedwig, who lights up the screen like a Finnish Lauren Bacall with a great sideline in “oh-for-eff’s-sake” scowls. She had been contracted to Suomen-Filmiteollisuus straight out of high school in 1940, but spent several years stuck in bit parts. This was her first real chance to shine, and she would finally get her dues playing the lead in Anna-Liisa (1945). By that point, however, she’d had enough of the movies, and left the business to pursue further jobs on stage, and to return to school, where she qualified as a speech therapist.
Also, dentists. Why are there so many dentists in old Finnish films?
Jonathan Clements is the author of A Short History of Finland. He is watching all the Finnish films, so you don’t have to.
