The Norrtull Gang
About The Norrtull Gang
Pegg, a Stockholm clerk supporting her little brother Putte, shares a flat with three other office workers: steady Eva, ailing Emmy, and eighteen-year-old Baby. The four of them, the Norrtull gang, deal with the pay and with men at work who will not leave them alone. They varnish the keyhole shut so they can walk around in their underwear, and when Pegg gets home the others are drinking beer draped in sheets. A law clerk courts Baby. Pegg, who had hoped to keep Baby out of that, ends the film engaged to an older man.
Cast & crew
More about The Norrtull Gang
Elin Wägner sold the rights to her 1908 novel Norrtullsligan, first a Dagens Nyheter Sunday serial, to the new firm Bonnierfilm. Hjalmar Bergman wrote the script, including the happy ending the company asked for. Karin Swanström and Stellan Claësson were production managers. The six-reeler, 2,086 meters, opened on Boxing Day 1923 at Röda Kvarn on Biblioteksgatan in Stockholm. Censors had passed it on December 19 (certificate 32857) for viewers 15 and older.
Themes
Reviews
Märta Lindqvist in Svenska Dagbladet called it a women's film in which the men barely registered, cheerful and marked by Lindberg's independent spirit, though of little use to anyone who had not read the book. She accepted the happy ending because the last scenes were cut with comic interludes. Robin Hood in Stockholms-Tidningen wrote that Lindberg got effects by shooting obliquely from above, and that the style was new.
Look
Ragnar Westfelt photographed the film at the Bonnier studio on Kungsholmen, with scenes at Sabbatsberg Hospital and the restaurant Gyldene Freden. Robin Hood singled out shots taken at a slant from above.
Music
Silent. At the Röda Kvarn premiere the house orchestra played under Rudolf Sahlberg.
Preservation
A print is held by the Swedish Film Institute. The Swedish Media Database catalogs the SFI copy as Digital Betacam T03-0473, received October 29, 2003, and times it at 105 minutes at 17 frames per second.
Notes
- Tora Teje is Pegg, Inga Tidblad is Baby, Renée Björling is Eva, and Linnéa Hillberg is Emmy, described in the novel as gray as an old shawl.
- Egil Eide plays Pegg's boss, Nils Asther the law clerk who courts Baby, and Gabriel Alw Eva's fiancé. Lili Ziedner plays a strike agitator.
- Lauritz Falk, then thirteen, made his screen debut as Putte.
- Hjalmar Bergman's wife Stina was director Per Lindberg's sister. Bonnierfilm had hired Bergman to adapt popular books from the Bonnier list.
- Schamyl Bauman's Efterlyst (1939) is a free-standing follow-up drawn from the same novel.
- The Swedish Media Database times an SFI copy at 105 minutes when run at 17 frames per second. Swedish Wikipedia's 76 minutes matches the 2,086-meter length at 24 frames per second, the speed the Swedish Film Database lists.
Scenes
- The clerks drink beer in sheets and dance when Pegg comes home from the office.
- They varnish the keyhole so they can walk around the flat in their underwear.
Influenced
- Efterlyst (1939)
Also available
- Swedish Film Institute (archive copy T03-0473)
Quotes
Det var nästan som i Paradiset. Guds fagra änglar, pilsner och en smeka med köttbullar." ("It was almost like Paradise. God's fair angels, pilsner, and a caress with meatballs.")