The Magic Voyage of Sinbad + The Day the Earth Froze

Hi Aki,

Last night we watched The Magic Voyage of Sinbad + The Day the Earth Froze

These two movies came on one disk, one movie per side. Both are foreign films licensed in the very-early 1960s by micro-studio American International Pictures, where Roger Corman held sway producing mostly genre and terror pictures for drive-in theaters, with a special eye on the teen and college viewers (who would mostly mock the movies or make out in their cars while the films screened).

These two movies were imported by AIP then recut, dubbed, and released under false pretenses. The movies were then cut again and (maybe) reformatted for release to local television stations in North America. Finally RetroMedia got the rights to digitize and put them on DVD.

In the process of refashioning the films for TV, AIP had to reach a very narrow running time to fit a 90-minute slot (plus commercials). The total running time for the film would then end up about 80 minutes. So some early Corman pictures with 65-minute running times had to get some additional scenes shot later on, when the TV licensing deal came through; and longer pictures needed to be shortened. I suspect both these films were shortened, and that it’s the TV versions that RetroMedia digitized.

According to the RetroMedia liner notes, at least Sinbad was overseen by the young Francis Ford Coppola. RetroMedia included shots of the lobby cards and posters for both films, and I notice that both were advertised as ‘In Vistascope!’ which implies a widescreen format; I’m not sure if the films were shot widescreen or if AIP was just misleading its audience again.

Sinbad is a Russian film, and it was a big budget epic. I’m not sure if it was originally meant to depict Sinbad or some folk hero of Russia, or a new imagined character – in any event the guy does take a voyage and visits some strange lands. There was a big budget on this film, lots of effects, costumes, props.

The story has ‘Sinbad’ returning home to his fabulous city, only to find that the people are in misery. The rich have taken over and, like the rich everywhere, they have only gotten richer – this time at the workers’ expense (this was produced in Soviet Russia, after all). Sinbad wants to give his fellow citizens hope by bringing them the bird of happiness (it turns out to be blue, with a tip of the hat, I suppose to Maurice Maeterlinck). To do that he must win the help and friendship of one of the sea-king’s daughters. She digs him, so she helps.

Sinbad sets out on magic ships with all the volunteers he can muster. They visit some land that seems like modern day Pakistan, anyway it has temples rather like Babylon and the kings look like they are from the subcontinent, ride elephants and play chess. Sinbad and his crew are captured, and he must beat the king at chess – by using magic pieces. He then manages to put all the city inhabitants to sleep so he and his men can walk out unharmed.

Then he goes past Egypt, and decides to turn back – there is a sweet girl back in his home city and Sinbad misses her too much to carry on any longer without her. Then the fleet encounters a fierce storm, and Sinbad himself falls overboard to the bottom of the sea, where the sea-king decides whether to let him live or not. Sinbad hooks up again with the daughter who favors him and escapes, with the blue bird of happiness. He makes it back home and all is well.

I confess I didn’t hear a single sound from the film after the first couple of scenes, but set the dvd player on fast forward and watched it soundless on the fly, just to get a good flavor of the images. The color is washed out, and a bit strange, but I can’t say if that is on the original process used in Russia at the time, or if it comes from the prints used to make the TV versions, or from RetroMedia, but RetroMedia does preface their version with an apology for the uneven quality of the video and audio elements, which they had to pick up from different sources of varying quality.

The Day the Earth Froze is a Finnish film, recounting the core legend of the Kalevala – the forging and loss of the magical mill the Sampo, which could grind out anything you wished for, and the loss and recovery of the Sun to the land of Kalevala.

AIP really didn’t know what to do with this one. Sinbad was a popular name thanks to some work by a chap name of Ray Harryhausen, but nobody in the American market knew Elias Lonnrot from Hans Christian Andersen. Rather than package the movie as a children’s matinee picture, AIP decided to focus on the climax, which involves the dark, frozen wasteland that the land of Kalevala becomes after the wicked witch captures and hides the sun in a cave. Somebody liked the Fox picture from a decade before, so they got the title The Day the Earth Froze and advertised it as ‘a chilling tale of terror!’

The budget, effects, and general technical expertise in Finland was not up to Russian standards, and it shows here – although again, it’s anybody’s guess what the original picture looked like, except we can be sure that it looked better than what I saw.

The story involves Anaki (fair warning, I’m not sure I’m spelling the names right), a beautiful maiden, sister to the mighty, immortal smith Ilmarinen. There is a legend that when Anaki falls in love it will come time to forge the Sampo, and for some reason this is feared, so Ilmarinen warns his sister, and she stays apart from all men. All the men agree not to woo her, except one – Leminkainen, a woodsman who lives and works so deep in the forest he has never heard of her. He works so hard his father at last tells him to go back home to rest. Leminkainen steps onto a log and with but a long pole-oar rides it down the river, in the most interesting sequence of the movie – the actor (or his stunt double) actually seems to be standing on a log (maybe on notches cut on the log) and riding it through some rapids, without falling, balancing himself only by leaning on the pole-oar.

Down the river he happens to find Anaki on the river bank. The two young people instantly fall in love, and she takes him to her brother. Ilmarinen agrees to the wedding, and then a group of elders comes to ask the smith, isn’t it time for him to forge the Sampo? But Ilmarinen protests that he has no fire hot enough to do it, that it can only be done using the fire from the sky.

We leave the people of Kalevala and go far north, to the lair of the wicked witch Louki. She has captured and chained not only the fire from the sky but all the elements of nature – winds, mist, snow. Ceaselessly she urges her slaves to forge the Sampo, for which her greedy heart lusts, but none of them can manage it, wizards though they be. ‘Only the mighty smith Ilmarinen could forge the Sampo,’ they tell her.

So the wizards conjure up an image of Ilmarinen as he stands giving Anaki and Leminkainen his bleesing. Straight away the witch knows that if she kidnaps Anaki she will be able to force Ilmarinen to forge the Sampo for her. She sends her cloak to fly away and get Anaki, a sequence done with imagination and good effects. The cloak flies with the winds, and finds Anaki stepping into a small boat. The cloak leaps onto the mast, fills with wind, and carries the helpless maiden across the seas to Louki’s land.

Ilmarinen learns of this and determines to go rescue his sister. Leminkainen will go too. They sail to Louki’s land where they confront her army of wizards. The witch agrees to give them Anaki if each will perform one service to her. First, that Leminkainen will plow and plant a field of serpents. This is impossible, as no draft beast can live after the serpents bite it. But Ilmarinen forges a horse out of metal and this draws the plow, and the task is done. Now it is Ilmarinen’s turn, but the witch tells him it’s no good even to ask after his sister now, for his boat is wrecked (by her wizards, though she claims it was a whale that did it).

She then demands that Ilmarinen forge the Sampo for her. He protests, and tells her anything but the Sampo, but the witch wants the Sampo and nothing else. So Ilmarinen, aided by the wizards, uses the captured fire from the sky and forges the magical mill, here represented as looking rather like a pipe-organ.

(A note here that the original tale uses only words, of course, so the word ‘Sampo’ and the other word ‘mill’ can stand for anything you might picture. In illustrated versions of the Kalevala I’ve seen the Sampo depicted as a small tabletop salt mill; evidently that was insufficiently grand for the movie, a feeling I can endorse. Actually when you want to film something magical like this, I feel that you should either go big or very small: either a big pipe-organ like they did here, or something that looks small and quite ordinary, like a table salt mill. The only other way that works is not to show the thing at all – not really an option in this case. The kids will want to see the Sampo!)

Ilmarinen proves it is indeed the magic mill by commanding it to put forth gold, flour, and salt, all at once. The three streams come out, and the witch gives back Anaki. The lovers and smith depart in a bronze boat the smith has forged to replace the wooden boat they came in. But on the way back Leminkainen swears he will steal the Sampo and bring it to the land of Kalevala. He leaps overboard and swims to the land of Louki and steals the Sampo. But Louki sends a storm after him, and he is lost … his mother mourns for him and asks a birch tree, a mountain, and other elements what became of her son, but none can tell her. At last she finds him washed up on the beach. She’s delighted to find him alive, but Leminkainen is heartsore: the Sampo, magical mill, was destroyed. All he could salvage was its lid. The Sampo is lost forever.

Meanwhile the witch is gnashing her teeth. She’s even more enraged when she sees from afar Leminkainen and Anaki getting married. She flies with her magical cloak to the land of Kalevala and steals the Sun out of their sky. From now on it’s dark in the land. And then the witch sends cold north winds and storms, and the land freezes over. Leminkainen is really sad because he can’t even see his wife’s eyes in the dark, and can’t remember what color they were.

In desperation Leminkainen and Ilmarinen and all the warriors prepare to go attack Louki and get the Sun back. Their old wizard gives them advice. He flings the lid of the Sampo into the sky where it blazes with the Northern Lights, showing the way to Louki’s land. The smith makes musical instruments for them all instead of spears and swords, and they walk over the frozen sea, dragging their boats behind them. In Louki’s land they play the instruments and put all her wizard-warriors to sleep. Then Leminkainen chases the witch to the cave where she hid the Sun. She turns to stone to guard the entrance, but Leminkainen with one blow of the sword Ilmarinen long ago forged, shatters her and the stone door to bits, and the Sun flies up into the sky. The sea thaws, the people sail back home, and all is well again.

But the magical mill, the Sampo, can never be forged again.

The movie is pitched for ‘the young’ as a sort of fairytale. Thus the acting is broad and simple, and the only role that has any sort of play or development is the old witch Louki, giving the actress a lot of fun being wicked and evil and treacherous.

The print was muddy and dark in the darker scenes which include the scenes at Louki’s cavernous lair, scenes in the forest even by day, and all the scenes when the Sun is held captive. Here I expect the print and video are to blame, and I’m sure the original print as screen in Finland looked a lot better. The camera moves very little, though there is one great crane shot that begins with a look over the forested countryside, and follows the foresters walking along a path on the ridge, and finally settles on Leminkainen – it’s his introduction, and he gets probably the best introduction in cinematic terms. Soon after this we follow him down the river on the log, another impressive bit that helps us understand that here is a hero. Ilmarinen on the other hand is not treated so well, and Anaki is just presented on a soundstage forest luring birds to her hand. But I will bet that there was more in the way of introductions in the original; remember that this is the AIP version as cut down, most likely, to produce this 80-minute TV version. The great old Kalevala wizard, son of the Virgin, mightiest singer in the world, whose name I can’t remember, is really trimmed here.

(21 March 2009)