Op med hodet: Tancred Ibsen’s 1933 Experiment in Cinematic Modernism

ABSTRACT: The grandson of two of Norway’s most famous nineteenth-century writers, Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Tancred Ibsen holds a central place in the history of Norwegian cinema. He was its leading director in the 1930s and 1940s and is best remembered for Den store barnedåpen [The Great Baptism] (1931), Fant [Tramp] (1937) and Gjest Baardsen (1939). Ibsen’s third feature film, Op med hodet [Cheer Up!], from 1933, has meanwhile remained largely forgotten and unseen outside of film archives. Ibsen later wrote in his autobiography that, regarding his own development, no film had meant as much to him or taught him as much. With Op med hodet, Ibsen self-consciously borrowed from the polar opposite worlds of the Hollywood popular-genre film and the European avant-garde cinema. Despite the film’s commercial failure and relative obscurity to date, Op med hodet reveals Tancred Ibsen as a modernist European filmmaker and artist attempting technical and narrative experiments radical for their time in Nordic cinema.