Jörn Donner

Not a week goes by without some article regarding the prolific writer, director and producer Jörn Donner. Perhaps this is an overstatement, but the fact is that for decades he has spoken out - and been listened to. Of course there is the Donner of headlines and scandals and then there is something more interesting, more valid and important, because in search of Donner one is confronted by multiple paths and crossroads. His work as an author, journalist, politician, and Academy Award-winning producer can lead us down different routes, which perhaps end up, perhaps not, in the same place. The list of credits can be as surprising as it is long. He has worked as Director of both Swedish and Finnish film institutes, been a member of the European Parliament, and in the meantime found time to make films and write dozens of books.

Perhaps the key, the most interesting aspect of his work is in these multiple books. Amongst them is a landmark study of Ingmar Bergman and 3 travel books on the state of Europe and the world during the cold war (Report from Berlin, The Donau Report, The Worldbook). Donner proves himself to be a thinker with substantial knowledge of history and politics, and the ability to distance and analyse - this being something that he has always been willing to put himself through as well. The difference between the newspaper headlines and the thoughts expressed in his partly autobiographical books (e.g. Sommaren av Kärlek och Sorg) is often a remarkable one. Whether it be reports on the state of the world or novels like Marina Maria, wherein a 24-year old secretary is searching for a father for the child she doesn’t have, the themes in his literature circle around the same subject matter as his films. The 11 books on the Anders family follow the life and times of a middle-class entrepreneurial family caught in the turmoil of Finnish history. In the same way as in his feature films, Donner captures a changing society and the obstacles and temptations that individuals meet within it.

In his Swedish film Rooftree, a concentration camp survivor encounters the smug attitude of a country that has not fought a war for hundreds of years. In Men Can’ t be Raped a rape victim wants her payback in a society where even the officials do not believe a man could be raped. In Black on White Donner himself plays a married sales executive who falls in love with his co-worker and faces a troubled relationship. In 1984 he directed one of the Anders books in a film called Dirty Story - he has usually written the screenplays for his films himself. As David Thomson remarks in his entry regarding Donner in the Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema : “There is an interesting sense of the whole man being involved”. He then goes on to point out that “It is a threatening posture, for Donner implies that film might be used in the way that people once kept journals or diaries to observe themselves”.

The film Portraits of Women can perhaps best be understood as an ironic commentary regarding the prejudice that Donner must have felt from people when he returned to Finland - surely a depressing place to make films after having started his feature film career in Sweden and won an award at the Venice film festival with his first feature. For years Donner was the filmmaker with contacts abroad in a country where too many were filming with Sovcolor instead of Kodak. In documentary, Donner’s approach has been as personal as in his fictional works. As a producer he has played a role in establishing new filmmakers from the Kaurismäki brothers to documentary filmmakers. His latest feature production Raja 1918 is based on his own original idea. To cover Donner multiple articles would be needed, more time and thought given, but even the surface can offer a glimpse into his many lives. Besides, without him Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander would never have been made. Luckily, it was.

Atso Pärnänen