For the final title in my run of 50's Nordic cinema (1950-1959) reviews, I dug deep into my downloads,and found a film I had forgotten about getting! Trying to play it a few days ago,I kept finding the subtitles refusing to synch up. Searching on how to fix them,I ended up stumbling on a new file of the flick, which led to me becoming the wild one.

View on the film:

Hanging in the back seat as the guys drive round for some cherries to pop, writer/director Olle Hellbom picks a rough and ready Punk Noir atmosphere off from the streets, gathering all the rebellious youth in a cramped cafe that Hellbom pans the camera across the cafe, capturing the cramped, pent-up tension between each gang.

Rocking Bibban between Roffe and Lasse, Hellbom rides them out to a shattering doom-laden final ride with excellent, drenched in shadow close-ups of Bibban eyeing her transformation from pretty young thing into a drained Femme Fatale, being seated next to the rogue, ruthless youthfulness of Roffe being pelted with lines of white lights unzipping each of his rough edges.

Unbuckling all the gangs hanging outside the cafe working on their cars/bikes, the screenplay by Hellbom superbly kicks-starts the troubled relationship between Roffe and Bibban with the spike of the youthful rebellion frustrations of the era, as Roffe hits out at anyone who tries to put limits on him, and becomes growing abusive over Bibban saying no.

Wonderfully contrasting the abrasiveness of Roffe, Hellbom gives the growing bond between Bibban and Lasse a sweet teenage innocence, sparkling in the crisp dialogue between the pair in car rides, driving towards love, before being taken by Roffe off the tracks. Hit by rocks of those who want to knock her down,Christina Schollin gives a outstanding Femme Fatale performance as Bibban, thanks to Schollin wearing a flirting, knife-edge rebellion streak, with a underlying romantic warmth for Lasse,away from the wild one.

Following Marlon Brando's hit movie The Wild One in 1953, film-makers around the world were having a crack at the troublesome teenager genre. Germany gave us Die Halbstarken (Teenage Wolfpack, 1956) with a young Horst Buchholz, and France came up Les Tricheurs (Youthful Sinners, 1958) featuring an equally young Jean-Paul Belmondo. Japan's contribution was The Cola Game (1959) in which young couples devised a game with a cola bottle, the winners having to make love in front of the rest of the gang. The Swedish entry was Raggare (1959) a term which denoted the greaser or hot rod movement in Sweden.

Unfortunately, the British Board of Film Censors didn't like this sort of film at all, so having refused a certificate to Brando it was inevitable that his Swedish imitators would also suffer a censor ban. Under its new title Blackjackets, it was duly rejected on 13 January 1960. Undeterred, small distributor Cross Channel did their best to exhibit the film in as many cinemas as possible, and the London premiere was held at the Compton Cinema (for members only) on 26 January 1961. The film had a popular five-week run, even returning in January1962 for a further three weeks. The press were generally hostile, describing the film as distasteful and unacceptable. Kinematograph Weekly dismissed Blackjackets as "an ugly, nay, sickening social document." However, looking at the film today, it doesn't seem anything like as shocking.

The bad boy of the gang is Roffe, played by Bill Magnusson who smirks a lot and has a passing resemblance to Russ Tamblyn. Glamour is provided by the attractive Christina Schollin playing Bibban. Highlight of the first half of the film sees Bibban, who had been fraternizing with a square, thrown into a ditch and pelted by the gang with mud. To clean up, she takes a nude swim in a nearby lake, which is great news for Christina Schollin fans, although logic dictates she would have been a lot warmer in her own bathtub. The climax of the film sees Bibban crash the car and finish up incinerated, along with Roffe who had been hiding in the boot. Sadly, Miss Schollin messes up her big death scene by seeming to be knocked out before the car actually crashes.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Blackjackets is a strangely compelling film which certainly sticks in the memory. It was extremely memorable for Miss Schollin and the film's good guy Hans Wahlgren – they got married and had four children!