Sampo

Sampo (1959)

Сампо

Based on Finnish mythology; Lemminkäinen woos the fair Annikki and battles the evil witch Louhi. Louhi kidnaps Annikki to compel her brother to build for her a Sampo, a magical device that creates salt, grain, and gold. When Lemminkäinen fails to recover the Sampo, Louhi steals the sun, plunging the world into frozen darkness.

Date of release
1959-08-24
TMDB
4.6 / 10 (31)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Adventure, Fantasy
Director
Aleksandr Ptushko

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Kalevala

Sampo is a 1959 Soviet-Finnish fantasy film based loosely on the events depicted in the Finnish national epic Kalevala. In the United States, it was released in an edited version, The Day the Earth Froze, by American International Pictures as a double feature with Conquered City. This version was later featured in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Production

The film was primarily a Soviet Mosfilm production. Finnish film companies were reluctant to participate, but Suomi-Filmi was eventually persuaded to join the production.

Each scene was shot a total of four times (using two cameras), as the film was produced in both Russian and Finnish (with dialogue dubbed afterwards) and in both standard and anamorphic widescreen aspect ratios. The film used the Sovcolor color film process. Sampo was the first Finnish film to feature surround sound, with four channels.

The US version The Day the Earth Froze received 24 minutes of cuts, decreasing the 91 minute runtime to 67 minutes; its credits were heavily altered: the original credits were replaced with English language titles. For example, Ptushko was credited as 'Gregg Sebelious', Andris Oshin was listed as 'Jon Powers', and Eve Kivi was listed as 'Nina Anderson'.

Lemminkäinen confronting Louhi and her trolls, being escorted to the Sampo and standing in awe. While he is in awe of the Sampo's beauty he is murdered by a serpent bite and thrown into the sea.

Lemminkäinen's mother searching for her son, asking a birch tree, the mountain path and the sun. She then walks across the sea to Pohjola and confronts Louhi, who tells her he has left his tribesmen behind. Lemminkäinen's mother refuses to believe this and Louhi reluctantly tells her the truth. Lemminkäinen's mother asks the gods for help and Lemminkäinen is washed up on the shore, she carries him back to Kalevala.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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