Captain Grogg's Wonderful Journey
About Captain Grogg's Wonderful Journey
Captain Grogg and the ship's boy Kalle load a little sailboat at a dock. The important cargo is beer and brandy. The trip has a storm and a calm. A mermaid with a Swedish face is so taken with Grogg that she misses the sharks. Ashore, a lion drives them up a coconut palm. Grogg falls into the lion's mouth. A Black man drives a spear in. Grogg uses the spear to cut his way out, and the brandy is drunk as he comes through. The village gives Grogg a post. Kalle gets the princess, and a tropical moon sits over them.
Cast & crew
More about Captain Grogg's Wonderful Journey
This is the first of Victor Bergdahl's thirteen Captain Grogg cartoons, made from 1916 to 1922. Kapten Groggs underbara resa opened at Röda Kvarn in Stockholm on 14 August 1916, supporting Mauritz Stiller's Kärlek och journalistik. The censor had passed 176 meters on 5 July 1916, number 15589, all ages. At 18 frames a second the Swedish Film Database times it at 9 minutes. Svenska Biografteaterns Filmbyrå distributed it.
Themes
Making
The Swedish Film Database calls the 1916 voyage Bergdahl's popular breakthrough. He had already made Trolldrycken (1915) and the circus cartoons, and those had been hard to get onto screens. Grogg was the character that filled Röda Kvarn.
Reviews
Dagens Nyheter's notice is less a review of the jokes than a question about the craft: how the drawn voyage was done at all.
Preservation
A print is on Wikimedia Commons. The Swedish Film Institute's cinematheque showed the short on 29 March 1973, and Filmhuset in Stockholm showed it on 12 December 2002.
Notes
- Dagens Nyheter asked, in the middle of a laugh at the voyage, how on earth the drawn film had been made.
- Bergdahl, born in 1878, drew Grogg as a red-faced sea dog in a uniform jacket and a peaked cap, with a nose that advertises what he drinks. Kalle is the boy beside him.
- A strip version by Bergdahl started in the humor magazine Kasper in 1919.
- Wikimedia Commons holds a file under the Swedish title. Wikidata times one copy at 8 minutes.
- After the thirteenth Grogg film in 1922, Bergdahl moved to advertising animation. His last film was the 1936 sex-education short Från cell till människa.
Scenes
- Beer and brandy go aboard as the main cargo.
- The mermaid stares at Grogg and does not see the sharks.
- Grogg drops into the lion's mouth, and the spear that was meant to kill it becomes his way out.
- Kalle is left with the princess under a tropical moon.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Kapten Groggs underbara resa (1916).webm)
