As the railroad slowly takes shape from Turku in the south to Vaasa in the north, construction bosses discover that their path is blocked by land belonging to the widow Laurila (Siiri Angerkoski), who will take some persuading. Unexpectedly, they find themselves leaning on the negotiating skills of Lapatossu (Aku Korhonen), an aging, workshy railway builder who reveals a previously unknown knack for disguises.

The Lapatossu stories were originally published at the turn of the twentieth century by the author Juho Nurhonen. The relation of these original tales, however, to Aku Korhonen’s portrayal of the character on film is tenuous at best, with only faint reminders that our easy-going everyman might be a noble fallen on hard times, or some sort of Holy Fool watching the modernisation of the Finnish countryside with wry bafflement. Lapatossu is an old builder on the new railway – in a triumph of unimaginative translation, the film can somehow be found referred to in English as The Old Railroad Worker. But there is so much more to him that that – he seems to slide with chameleon-like ease between the hard-pressed bosses and the happy-go-lucky navvies; he is respected by his fellow workers, and indulged by the cooks and housemaids.

Within the context of my film-by-film marathon of Suomen Filmiteollisuus productions, Lapatossu is a sudden burst of creativity and experimentation. In one scene, the Finnish slang flies so fast that Swedish subtitles sneak onto the screen, to help all those urbane posh people who might have trouble following the gags. Elsewhere, the dialogue takes on a naturalistic tone, with actors interrupting each other or visibly trying to stop themselves giggling at Korhonen’s onscreen antics, while the camera flits between conversationalists, apparently unsure of who is going to speak next. This film has plainly been shot in the short Finnish summer, and the crew make the most of outdoor locations, figuratively shrugging at minor glitches in foley, audio and focus. The music, meanwhile, is oddly terrible, unless the Helsingin Teatteri Orkesteri was somehow deliberately playing the score flat and tunelessly, in imitation of an ad hoc band of amateurs.

There are some notable departures in casting. Jorma Nortimo, once a recurring dastard, more recently a romantic lead, transforms himself once again into the foppish milksop Heikki, by the simple expedient of putting on a pair of spectacles. Aku Korhonen, who played several character roles for Suomen Filmiteollisuus with varying degrees of success, suddenly gets to shine here in the loveable title role, finding a new sidekick in Kaarlo Kartio as Vinski. Lost in the supporting cast since his star turn in Scapegoat (1935), Kartio gets to work as Korhonen’s foil, setting up numerous gags, and channelling Laurel & Hardy in a dance routine in which Korhonen camps it up by donning a shawl and playing the coquette. Korhonen is also visibly charming in his flirtations with the older actresses, shunting the usual half-hearted young-lead B-plot romance out of centre stage, to the extent that the fey Heikki’s ham-fisted wooing of the widow’s daughter Irja (Laila Rihte) is played almost entirely for laughs and cringes.

Lapatossu is somewhat defeated by the picaresque, episodic nature of its origins, as if a bunch of one-page vignettes have been clumsily stapled together until they bulk out to feature length. The saga of the missing cream is solved with broad humour when Lapatossu doses a jug with a strong laxative, while the widow Laurila is briefly won over when Lapatossu disguises himself as a visiting dignitary. But just when you think the film is done, Lapatossu and Vinski run away and join the circus for a pointless interlude in which he masquerades as a strongman.

Possibly because by the time this film was made, the railway had been a fact of everyday life for a generation, there is no sense imparted of the incredible engineering achievement of building a railway from south to north – Lapatossu and his fellow workers might as well be working on a building site. Taken out of historical context, Lapatossu is frankly forgettable, but it is a cut above most other Suomen Filmiteollisuus comedies of its era, and was made at a crucial point in history. Thanks to its 1937 success and the commissioning of two sequels, it and its leads were propelled to austerity stardom in the dark days of wartime. The title character, in particular, became something of an icon among the soldiers of the Winter War.

Jonathan Clements is the author of An Armchair Traveller’s History of Finland. 

The arrival of city-boy surveyor Yrjö (Jorma Nortimo) drastically disrupts the way of life in a remote Ostrobothnian village. He falls for Eliina (Ansa Ikonen), the disabled daughter of a local bigwig, whose devout sister Johanna (Ester Toivonen) is torn between two suitors, her life-long neighbour and betrothed, and a newer arrival of whom her father disapproves.

Kuin uni ja varjo was based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Eino Railo, which was at the very height of its popularity – in 1937, it had been reprinted three times in the two years since it was published. Certain elements of it seem to break with Finnish filmic tradition, particularly the pat romantic denouements so beloved of Suomen Filmiteollisuus. Spoiler warning: only one of the two leading couples ties the knot by the end, in a miserable ceremony in which the bride and groom wear Gothic black, a man bitterly proclaims his religious faith after being blinded, and a jilted lover almost dies of consumption on the sidelines.

Much of the tension revolves around the clash of privileged newcomers rolling into a town where everybody knows everybody, and has assumed for years that fates are well and truly predestined. Life has not changed a whole lot in the countryside for decades – Yrjö’s arrival is a taste of things to come, as the horse and cart, the church as the centre of village life, and the expectations of Finnish youth are all about to be radically transformed. The wedding scene that closes the film is supposedly a happy ending, but is also a glimpse of a dying rural culture.

The likes of Yrjö serve as a sudden, unexpected wake-up call that there is a whole world beyond the edge of the village, and that things really don’t have to be the way that the villagers have assumed. The nuances of Ostrobothnian language fly right over my head, but are apparently a Thing here, as are a series of unintentionally ridiculous fight scenes, in which men heartily wrestle with one another as if nobody has ever suggested they try throwing a punch. It is also oddly jarring to see a 19th-century church congregation belting out a hymn, since my 21st century experience has been one of Finns staring glumly at their shoes while the church organist plods through the tune and a lone cantor sings along at the back.

Ansa Ikonen, a major stage actress who had thus far only appeared in bit parts for Suomen Filmiteollisuus (better known, in fact for films by the rival studio Suomi Filmi), gets top billing on the poster in the role of Eliina, for which she lurches around on crutches and simpers adoringly at Yrjö. In a scene that might seem clichéd today but was probably a winner in its time, she has a dream sequence at a village dance in which she leaps to her feet and dances with Yrjö, only to be woken from her reverie when her crutches drop loudly to the floor.

Ester Toivonen is winningly severe as the religious Johanna, although she disappears for entire stretches of the film, leaving her rival suitors to duke it out between them. The third big female name on the poster is Laila Rihte as the serving girl Kerttu, whom I barely noticed for the first half of the film, before she is suddenly parachuted into the drama as an alternate love interest. Blink and you also miss Kaarlo Kartio, as ever unrecognisable in another brief character role.

Jonathan Clements is the author of An Armchair Traveller’s History of Finland.