Minna Canth (1844-97) is widely acknowledged as Finland’s first significant female writer. She championed women’s rights and feminism, and drew social issues into her writings and discourse. The play Anna-Liisa, which she wrote in the last few years of her life, combines two of her staple themes: a rural setting and social issues. Anna-Liisa is a farmer’s daughter, who is about to marry Johannes. All seems well until a local old woman, Husso, reminds the girl about her past: she gave birth in secret to a child and got rid of it. The father was Husso’s son, Mikko, former farmhand at Anna-Liisa’s house, now a wealthy log driving manager come back to claim his own – Anna Liisa. Canth has turned what could be a tearjerker melodrama into a social statement. Her realism was shocking to the contemporary audience but it also seems ultra-melodramatic in its heightened contrast between different classes, sexes, and right and wrong. These contrasts were further simplified and enhanced in the film as Canth’s more nuanced full dialogue could not be used. Anna-Liisa, which was the first feature film produced by Suomi-Filmi, is quite on a par with contemporary films by Sjöström or Stiller in its use of cinematic expression. Puro confidently utilises flashbacks, dream sequences, and parallel plotlines. Nature is a protagonist, reflecting ambiance as in the seduction scene in the beginning, or as an interpreter of internal turmoil as Anna-Liisa collapses in the woods, the trees fall heavily on her. Anna-Liisa’s destiny was dictated by the rigid moral code of a late-1800s rural patriarchal society. Women were not allowed any premarital or sexual missteps. The pressure was so strong that a woman would rather commit infanticide than reveal her moral error. In Anna-Liisa’s case, this morality leads to her self-condemnation, a crisis that the melodrama emphasises with sadomasochist fervour.

Mikko Kuutti