Pensionat Paradiset

"The love of the old things is not because they are old. It's just that aging and decay give the necessary distance, or arouse the necessary sympathy." - Susan Sontag in her famous essay on camp, first published in Swedish in Chaplin 1966.

On various grounds, Weyler Hildebrand's Pensionat Paradiset (1937) is a veritable Swedish classic, some would call it a cult film. Early on, it came to be called, to some extent deceptively, "the pilsner film of the pilsner films". A couple of weeks after the premiere, it came to trigger the famous Concert Hall debate, after the criticism of the Swedish film had been heard strongly throughout the thirties.

It was a meeting arranged by the Swedish Writers' Association in order to scourge the scarcity of Swedish film and at best also suggest improvements. Several well-known cultural personalities participated, among them Vilhelm Moberg, the educator Gunnar Hirdman and the film critic Carl Björkman. In his review of Pensionat Paradiset in "Dagens Nyheter", Björkman had coined the later classic statement: "Swedish film - a disgrace to our culture".

Pensionat Paradiset ended up in the loophole for this blistering criticism. Is it a question about substandard art or exalted kitsch? The fact is that the audience has since loved the film as much as the cultural elite hated it.

From being originally ridiculed by critics, Pensionat Paradiset is today considered the crown jewel of the Swedish comedy in film. Bursting with immortal lines and crazy jokes, wonderfully revelry in archipelago environments and smorgasbord tables and of course Thor Modén's priceless singing effort with "A real Mexican".