Contesting Marriage : The Finnish Unromantic Comedy

Abstract

The genre of the romantic comedy was domesticated in the studio era of Finnish cinema that lasted from the early 1930s to late 1950s by filmmakers who admired Hollywood films, an example of whom would be Valentin Vaala. This domestication was an easy process for the reason that romantic comedies are universal in tone, which means they can be set pretty much in any location, discuss context-specific problems related to relationships and be produced with the modest budgets of small nation cinemas. This has made the genre more than suited for Finnish cinema. Before analysing the Finnish films in detail, I am going to provide a quick background exploration of Finnish romantic comedies of the studio era in order to show the transformation.