Round Up 1945, Part Three: The Green Chamber Of Linnaisten Mansion

Okay. With Linnaisten Vihreä Kamari, we now have a Finnish horror mystery that is not described on the IMDB or even mentioned at AMG, so do not bother asking me the names of the women in these pictures from the movie. Thus it would appear that it is no longer just Mexican movies I am going to have a hard time finding out about. The Aurum Horror Film Encyclopedia and Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural are likewise silent -- surprising, considering their usual thoroughness. Not only that, but ever since I cut and pasted the title of the film into this blog entry my keyboard will no longer type an apostrophe, quotation mark, slash or exclaimation point: I get è, È, é and É instead. It isnèt (damn!) the first time this has happened and I have no idea how to stop it, so for the duration of this post I will seem even more mannered and up myself than usual as I avoid all contractions and question marks while attempting to find something out about this film through rough machine translations of whatever the Finnish language websites have to say. I must, for you see, as far as I can recall I have never seen a fantastic film from Finland, and it is the goal of this website to find at least one (hopefully good one) from every film producing country on earth. I think I am going to find a blank outline map of the globe and start filling it in one movie at a time. Will Linnaisten Vihreä Kamari represent Finland on our map (question mark). Stay tuned, gentle reader.

First things first. One thing the IMDB does tell us is the name of the director, Valentin Vaala, about whom Wikipedia has this to say:

Valentin Vaala (born Valentin Ivanoff) (October 13, 1909 in Saint Petersburg - November 21, 1976 in Helsinki) was a Russian-born Finnish film director, who often also wrote the screenplays for and edited his own films. His career spanned several decades, from 1929 to 1973, and has been called one of the most significant, in both quality and popularity, in the history of Finnish cinema... During his career, Vaala directed 44 feature-length theatrical films, the second most among Finnish directors, behind only Toivo Särkkä. 

Maybe so, but AMG lists only two of the 44, and Wikipedia has no entry on the movie under investigation here. Cleaned up machine translation from a Spanish website follows:

Linnaisten Green Chamber: Film based on a Nordic novel, mixing suspense, terror and drama. In a high society mansion, a dramatic story unfolds involving the appearance of ghosts.

Green chamber and ghosts, then. Sounds intriguing, if a bit vague. Let us see what Finnish Wikipedia has to say about the film: 

Linnaisten Green Chamber is a classic Finnish horror romance... based on a story by Zacharias Topelius.

The rest of the translation is suggestive but too incomplete for reconstruction. Even so, now we are talking. A Google search for Topelius, Linnaisten and Green uncovers the existence of novel entitled The Green Chamber Of Linnaisten Mansion by Zacharias Topelius (the reviewer calls it dull), and a further search for that title results in a more or less English language plot capsule of the film at http://koti.mbnet.fi/basil/nest/allmovies.txt, (c) 2005 by someone identified only as Rex:

'The Green Chamber of Linnais'
Linnaisten vihreä kamari/Linnaisten kartanon vihreä kamari
Finland 1945 B/W 91min
****
Drama, mystery
cast: Rauli Tuomi, Reino Valkama, Kaija Rahola, Regina
Linnanheimo
credits: dir. Valentin Vaala 

The time is about 1800. Everybody in the manor lives happily. Two
daughters are searching their love and try to find somebody noble
enough for marrying. Somebody with a good name. A handsome architect
comes to the manor to do his business and soon there is love in the
air. But the manor has secrets which has something to do with certain
surnames and one of these surnames is mr. architects surname. The
dreams of marrying a daughter of the manor are gone because of this. Or
is it? Whose surname is really Littau and whose not? Is there really a
ghost in the green chamber? Who will marry that odd nobleman whose
home burnt? And who is that old woman? Sweetly spooky movie. Reminds of
good old days. Actor Rauli Tuomi (the architect) is just right in his
role and the others survive very well.  

Looks like that description and a few stills are going to have to suffice. Sweetly spooky. I like the sound of that, but I would say the chances of my ever getting to see this film are practically nil...