FINNISH PRODUCER LOOKS ON UNDER SIDE OF THE INDUSTRY

Nothing about Donner is predictable, save his unpredictability.

--Peter Cowie in Scandinavian Review

Most film producers are unknown beyond the narrow confines of their celluloid world. Film stars are known. And some directors. Even a few screenwriters. But a producer?

Very, very few. Jorn Donner is a member of this select pantheon, and he is no ordinary producer. He is the producer of Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander.”

This is the man who keeps the Oscar it won in 1983 on a cluttered shelf in a far corner of his office here. “Bergman didn’t want it,” he says with a gesture in its direction. “He’s not interested in such things. He thought that I, as producer of the film, should have it.”

Jorn Donner is not that interested in such things, either. There is so much else to do--and think about.

For example: Donner enjoys the implausible honor of being the only film producer in the entire world to have been a talk-show host in Stockholm and a member of the Helsinki City Council at the same time. He is no longer a talk-show host; he is still a member of the City Council.

During the energetic decade of the ‘60s, he also was writing, directing and producing films. One of them, the first he directed, won an award at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. Not content with directing, he founded his own production company in 1966 and has produced 36 films during its 20-year history. (Donner directed 11 of them.)

He is acerbic, cryptic, critical, analytical, verbal, charming, multilingual, an incessant cigarette smoker, and, without much likelihood of disagreement, the most prodigious and prolific creative spirit in Scandinavia today.

Even people outside the movie business know Donner from his television show and his novels. His name is, if not a household word, a familiar one. His powerful personality and opinions prompt strong reactions. No one feels neutral about Jorn Donner. They either like him or hate him.

Author Peter Cowie, writing on Donner in the recent issue of Scandinavian Review says: “Another person equipped with Donner’s gifts might have emigrated to Hollywood or Manhattan. To remain in Finland for such an individual implies more than patriotism. It signifies a profound yearning for the rhythms of Nordic life. Nobody who scans Donner’s output can fail to acknowledge that here is one Nordic personality whose sheer productivity is beyond question.”

From an office in what used to be the living room of a yellow frame cottage in a tree-shaded courtyard, Donner keeps in touch with film making all over the world. He lives only a few yards away in a somber gray stone building that faces the Helsinki harbor with its imposing fleet of massive ice breakers.

And from a fire-placed room lined with bulging bookshelves, he expresses his opinions on film activities everywhere.

Donner’s opinions are studied and reasoned because he is involved. He subscribes to magazines all over the world, Daily Variety among them. He goes to Cannes; he goes to Venice; he even goes to the Philippines. And he has been to the States frequently to promote Scandinavian films. Closest to his heart, of course, is film making in Scandinavia. His roots are here. He is a native Finn and an “adopted” Swede. He knows the territory.

He is concerned. And he is critical--not at all sharing the optimism of his counterparts elsewhere in Scandinavia.

His face clouds when he ponders the future of film making because he sees so much “complacency and laziness in thinking.”

“I’m not losing hope in the sense that there can be audiences and there can be film makers but, with the mental laziness of people, it’s not easy.”

As a former director of the Swedish Film Institute, Donner is particularly sensitive to film making in Sweden. And particularly familiar with what he sees as its shortcomings.

“Sweden is not, generally speaking, an artistically interesting country. Literature is not very good. Novels, often the basis for films, are not very good. Drama. Music. Pop music, O.K. Television drama not very good.

“So who says that you need the arts?” he asks rhetorically. “They (the government) are putting very much money into culture, into the distribution of culture, in films, libraries, in all forms, but the main part of this money is put into distributing activities. And that doesn’t solve creative problems.

“Maybe it’s the same thing elsewhere--I don’t know--in countries where you have full public financing. West German cinema isn’t that good anymore. It’s very uneven. French the same. They make 150 films and what do you see of them? Five at the most. This is an exaggeration, of course. Italy, except for the established old film makers--I know all the Italian film-makers because I went there as a journalist when they were young--but every year the same faces pop up. There is nothing new.

“It’s even fading in Australia. Now comes the big money. It’s Hollywoodized thinking that has been going on in Australia. It’s the same as in Canada a few years ago.

“There is lots to learn, but it’s not done in one day. You can write a very personal script if you’re a genius like Bergman, who did the script for ‘Autumn Sonata’ in a little more than two weeks time, but not everyone is a genius. And this example doesn’t tell us anything except that genius is genius.

“In the States you may think there are too many people involved, but from what I’ve seen of American scriptwriting and working on them, I think lots of people get relevant opinions, (which is why) I think development of American cinema is so superior to anything that’s been done anywhere in the world.

“But in Sweden that’s impossible. Impossible. Absolutely, because you can’t sit at the table with any would-be film maker in Sweden. Discussing is impossible. You can’t brainstorm, discussing what subject shall we tackle? How should we be? No. No. No. And it’s not that I’ve been isolated. I know most of them. . . .

“I have had a few young film makers who have listened to some sort of experience. I work as a mentor. I discuss things.

“I have young film makers working with me. I am maybe a sleeping partner. (In the States, it’s called silent partner.) They do their films, but I am involved financially, and practically we are discussing films that are made, how they are cut and how they are written.

“Sometimes I have helped them edit and shorten films, and so on.

“You know there are certain projects and certain films that we just can’t do in Scandinavia. If you want to build Leningrad in the ‘20s or Paris in the ‘30s, there’s a problem because the financial possibilities are limited.

“In the U.S., there is muscle and very much money in the cable and networks.

“Ten-million-dollar movies are impossible in Scandinavian countries. ‘Fanny and Alexander’ cost $7 or $8 million, but I had presold it in the States and to my partner in France, and I somehow knew it would be commercial success--as it turned out to be.

“I can’t have 500 extras, but then you have to concentrate on something with five extras. Bergman has been doing very inexpensive pictures. Some of his best were shot on Faro (his island home in the Baltic south of Stockholm).

“It’s not the money. It’s the intensity.

“There are lots of banks in the States that invest or loan (for films). But here you don’t have that. What’s the financing problem for the Coca-Cola Co. if it has a flop? They have others things.

“We don’t have these industrial backups, except in Svensk (Svensk Filmindustri). That’s the only example and a new one for Scandinavia.” (See related story.)

Now 52, Jorn Donner can reflect on a career that stretches back to 1951 with his first film and the publication of his first book. In 1957, he co-founded the Finnish Film Archive and was a film critic for Scandinavia’s largest newspaper. It was also during the ‘60s that he won the award at Venice and directed and founded his own production company.

A longtime observer and admirer of Ingmar Bergman, Donner in 1964 utilized his writing talent to produce a detailed analysis of the director’s films in “The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman.” During the same decade Donner was a member of the Helsinki City Council and directed and played the male lead in two films. (He hasn’t, however, earned much critical praise for his acting.)

In the ‘70s he wrote three novels, which are part of a series, directed two films--one “The Bergman File” in 1978--and served as president of the Swedish Film Institute during three tumultuous years (from 1978 to 1981.)

With this decade now half over, Donner finds him as chairman of the Finnish Film Foundation, author of three more novels, producer of “Fanny and Alexander”--and another Bergman film, “After the Rehearsal.” He also has produced and directed “Dirty Story,” based on one of his novels.

He’s working on a new book and on a production of “Flight Toward the North” based on a Klaus Mann novel. He also is a member--once again--of the Helsinki City Council, representing the Swedish People’s Party.

If all of this were not enough, Donner is involved in preparations for yet another book on Bergman. “I think there is a need for a book about him that is good and not specialized, but it takes time to do it, and I have to see the films again.

“I have little time for private life,” he said by way of explaining why his second wife of two years lives in Stockholm. “I have one secretary and a few part-time employees,” a house in the country outside Helsinki . . .” and all those projects.

Donner may well be disappointed with Scandinavian film making--and film making all over Europe for that matter--but he has not abandoned it. There seems little chance of that. It is, in very large measure, his life.