My original review was written in November 1980 after a screening at MoMA in NYC:
Lasse Glomm's 1978 first film "The Second Shift" is an intense romantic triangle story, masquerading as a social document. Sketchy script degenerates into repetitive situations, making film seem much longer than its barely feature-length running time.
Flashback tale has Olof Vikan, a 23 year-old arriving in an industrial town for a job at the state-run steel works. He befriends an older worker, Trond Amundsen and his wife Margot. Trond, 30 years Olof's senior, is a loyal union member, resistant to the current petition-circulating protestors, while both Olof and Margot identify with the dissenters. For his pains, Trond gets little respect at work, being treated like a shirker by a foreman one day when he takes a break due to stomach problems.
Working on separate shifts, Trond and Olof are ultimately both serviced sexually by Margot, while male duo remain the best of buddies as long as the deception lasts. When Trond finally gets wise, violence erupts.
Glomm fails to make his point about working conditions by not showing the effects of the union unrest; all one gets is a series of verbal arguments. Threesome's dramatic action is well-directed, with excellent cinematography by Erling Thurmann-Andersen; contrasting dramatic character closeups with awesome visuals of the steelmaking process and the vast reindeer roundups Olof used to work with.
It is left to intrusive narration to establish the disillusionment that has set in since the works opened in 1946 with plans for workers' control. Narrator sums up with: "It's not a question of what the state owns, but who owns the state"; a telling point but not integrated properly into the film's melodramatic narrative.
