Pekka Puupää (1953)

Directed by

Ville Salminen

Genre

comedy film

Country

Finland

Runtime

1h 11m

Rated

S

Rating

5.1 of 10 from 10 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A bumbling man named Pekka Puupaa gets into various silly situations. He and his friend Patka stumble through comedic mishaps. The film is based on a popular Finnish comic strip.

lightheartedcomedicsillyplayfulnostalgicslapstickwhimsicallow-stakes

What happens

Pekka Puupää (Swedish: Kalle Träskalle, also Pete Blockhead in English translation) is a 1953 Finnish comedy film directed by Ville Salminen and starring Esa Pakarinen, Masa Niemi and Siiri Angerkoski. It is the first film of the Pekka and Pätkä film series based on the comics by the same name created by Ola Fogelberg. The film was largely made on the same sets as Esa "Flies" to Kuopio, which came out in the same year and was also directed by Ville Salminen. Esa Pakarinen also wore exactly the same basic costume in every Pekka and Pätkä film. The film was shot in the winter and spring of 1953 and its production costs were 6.7 million Finnish marks. Although not much was expected from the movie based on the comic book, it was surprisingly successful, which led to twelve sequels. On television, the film was shown in 1965 on the Yle TV1 channel and it was watched by 1.6 million viewers. However, critics have never appreciated the loved film by the audience, let alone its sequels. Today critics consider that the "slapstick movie" has only nostalgic values, nothing more. Many critics turned their mocking into "art" and used the most imaginative puns and metaphors. Also, despite appearing in the film and its sequels as well, the actress Siiri Angerkoski never appreciated these films but considered them "idle-day nonsense". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• Pekka ja Pätkä ketjukolarissa (1957)
• Two Funny Guys (1953)
• Pekka ja Pätkä miljonääreinä (1958)
• Pekka Puupää poliisina (1986)