Elsa Brita Marcussen

Swedish-Norwegian film critic. Born in Stockholm. Daughter of politician and Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson.

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Between 1937 and 1943 Elsa Brita Marcussen (who wrote under the moniker of "Chat") was a leading critic film in the daily newspaper Social-Demokraten. After the Second World War she moved to Norway.

What characterised her as a critic was her analytical and almost essayistic style, rather than simply rating a film according to a scale. A political radical, she was not averse to broadening her reviews with a political or economic stance. This was a position that she vigorously defended in her educational book "Film" published in Swedish in 1951. In it she expressed her disdain for the systems already in place back then for rating a film with a number of stars or the like, systems which are now the norm. Her view was that a work of art - whether a film, a painting or a work of literature - cannot be confined in such simple categories.

In Norway she became an important figure in Norwegian film, both on the administrative side and in her role as a critic. Her various posts included Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs (1949-1951), board member of the Voksenåsen art hotel, chair of the Norwegian Film Critics' Association (1963-1966 and 1986-1990), plus head of film, and arts commissioner in Eidsvoll (1973-1977). She was head of the Norwegian Film Foundation (1951-1961), the Norwegian National Committee of Films For Children and Young People (1960-1981), and Cinema for Schools (1982-1985). Internationally she was president of the International Centre of Films for Children (1963-1971). As a journalist she was the editor of the magazine Filmdebatt (1951-1956), editor of Filmrevyen NRK Radio, and film critic for Arbeiderbladet and Film og Kino. During her long career she was the recipient of various international awards, including the French Médaille d'Argent de la Jeunesse et des Sports.

A typical example of her polemical style is "Apathy-inducing film propaganda - hymns to superficiality" (originally printed in the trade union magazine Beklädnadsfolket (1944) and reprinted in Andersson, Bjärlund and Eriksson's anthology "Contrasting Views: Swedish Socialist Film Criticism" (1978). In her article she rails against certain types of Hollywood films which have no interest in the lives of ordinary people. She does however name some people who are notable exceptions: King Vidor, Frank Capra, William Wyler and even John Ford for his film version of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". The anger with the state of affairs that Marcussen expresses in this article still feels like a breath of fresh air some seventy years later.

Gunder Andersson (2014)

(translated by Derek Jones)