Here we visit the genre of literary adaptation, presented from an ironic angle. The story is loosely based on a traditional Norwegian fairy tale, first written down in the 1840s by the folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. In the original tale, a King is so worried about his three daughters, due to an ill-fated prediction at their birth, that he will not let them leave the castle until their 15th birthday. One day, however, a thoughtless guard allows them out into the garden. As they are about to pick a beautiful rose, it suddenly starts to snow, and just as the prophecy foretold, the three princesses vanish! Despite the efforts of all the knights across the country, no one is able to find them, but a poor soldier finally conquers all obstacles by cleverness and bravery, and rescues the princesses from the trolls in the blue mountain.
In this deeply unserious film adaptation, however, the characters live in the present day, and the blue mountain into which the princesses disappear (accompanied by their guard) is a fancy department store in Oslo, Steen & Strøm. The princesses don’t seem to mind being there at all; they enjoy shopping at the store’s big sale, spending an enormous amount of money. Their doting father, the King, ever indulgent, forgives his daughters. After all, they did find some fantastic bargains at Steen & Strøm!
Unlike many commercials, this one has a known director, Ottar Gladtvet, and is produced by his private company, Gladtvet-Film. The guard is played by a fairly well-known Norwegian actor, Einar Sissener, who appeared in more than a dozen fiction films between 1926 and 1960 (including Carl Th. Dreyer’s Glomdalsbruden, 1926, shown at the Giornate in 2017), and was also credited as the director of a couple of them. In some scenes at the department store we even glimpse a bit of history: Norway’s first electrical escalator.
An original tinted nitrate print of the film was digitized in 2018.

Tina Anckarman, Magnus Rosborn