Don’t forget that while this is broadcast on NYE in Denmark and Sweden, in Norway it’s broadcast on Christmas which is something you should definitely bring up on a mixed Scandinavian family dinner.
It’s also quite fun since there’s a joke relationship between Swedes and Norwegians calling each other stupid, so it’s quite fun to insinuate that Norwegians simply do not understand that the movie is set on NYE.
Here in Norway every year on Christmas eve we also show Karl-Bertil Jonssons jul, a Swedish cartoon from 1975, where a underage postage worker steals packages from the rich and gives it to the poor.
It's hard to imagine it would be well received in most other countries, especially as a tradition.
Don't forget Tre nøtter til Askepott, an old communist Czech movie that's somehow so critical to Norwegian heritage they had to send a Norwegian team to another country to make sure it was preserved and restored.
My favorite part is how it's all dubbed into Norwegian by one guy doing all the voices, but he sorta starts giving up distinguishing the characters about half way through.
Spending Christmas with my friend's Norwegian family was just getting one "tradition" after another explained to me for a week while I continuously got more and more confused.
The guy doing the voices were improvising as he went along, as he was under the impression that it was a test. That this ended up being the track they used is, in itself, really odd. It's a funny track, though, so I guess that could be the reason?
To be pedantic, it was an East German / Czechoslovakian coproduction (called "Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel" here), and it's still huge in Germany too (browse German TV channels at any time between Christmas and New Year, and it's very likely that the movie is running on at least one of them).
Thanks for pointing out. I was confused by parent calling it „communist Czech movie“. It’s a fairy tale FFS, what does it have to do with communism? I never understood that obsession some people have with communism to see everything in the world through their iron curtain glasses.
It's important to understand that everything, even fairytales went through censorship / ideology conformity reviews, especially in those years ("normalisation", after the events of 1968/9). Many movies were either not produced at all or banned after production, others were heavily cut.
Yes, even fairytales had to adhere to the communist ideology - for example the poor were usually shown as being morally superior, while the rich were decadent and mostly stupid, etc.
It's also important not to forget that West Germany wasn't immune to the censorship either, and bans, beside what realistically was a Soviet propaganda, also included some really good documentaries and artwork even by today's standards.
Not sure why are you singling out West Germany here since the same applies to many other countries and tbh there is no particular issue with filtering content coming from totalitarian enemies interested in destroying you.
The very important distinction here is that were the same policies as in Czechoslovakia applied in West Germany, people like Rainer Werner Fassbinder would not be able to create their movies. Not distribute, create.
> tbh there is no particular issue with filtering content coming from totalitarian enemies interested in destroying you.
Both sides were very much interested in destroying each other (and worked actively on that), but problem is that whenever you have bureaucrats doing censorship in the name of the national or social interests, it ends up affecting far-wider circle of (innocent) people than officially intended, and often can be misused for other (political) purposes. The main reason I even commented on this is that few days ago I've seen an East-Germany documentary on German nazis working as mercenaries in South Africa, which was banned in West Germany, even though it had nothing "communistic" or anti-western - but it touches some not-so-popular subjects on nazis and nazi supporters in West and particularly W. Germany that (although true and well documented) they didn't want people to hear about. So they censored it as "communist propaganda", no questions asked...
Eastern block certainly had a lot more censorship and oppression than West, but it's important to be aware that lots of dirty s** happened in the West too, things were never as black and white as some people like to simplify it now.
Yup, and a remake was released last year, featuring one of our main pop stars. It is apparently an annual Christmas movie in 14 other countries too though, unlike Karl-Bertils, which likely due to the political subject matter is only tradition in the Nordic countries.
Robin Hood is pretty well recieved in the broader west, and Ned Kelly is an Australian icon. I think the theme is pretty universal. For Christmas tradition the west has Scrooge which reveals the inherent disconnect between Christmas and wealth.
It's a frequent misconception that it is set on NYE, since one of the guests (Mr. Pomeroy) says "Happy New Year Miss Sophie" in one of his toasts. But this is intended to be a joke, that the butler James is drunk enough to believe for a moment that it is NYE.
It’s also quite fun since there’s a joke relationship between Swedes and Norwegians calling each other stupid, so it’s quite fun to insinuate that Norwegians simply do not understand that the movie is set on NYE.