Swedish Rascals?

[malaria]

The great Swedish film My Life As A Dog has many Rascalian elements (loving obsession with dogs, incapacitated parent, kiddies getting up to no good, boxing matches... even an Oelze-type kiddie ride).  






Of  course, being Swedish,  it has its gloomy side; the mom is dying of TB, and the story of poor, doomed Laika The Space Dog hovers over the whole thing.  But to me (apart from the nudity... no Mickey Daniels, I note) it is updated Our Gang in Scandinavian idiom.

Of course, had the old shorts been made by Swedes, exchanges like this would ensue:


"The International Silver String Submarine Band?  Are you SURE?"
Swedish Scotty:  "The darkness gathers.  We are but unwilling participants in a sad drama, on a lonely and unloved planet orbiting an insensate  sun that knows nothing of it."

Brisbane:  "I have no desire to be king.  I want to be a ferry cleaner, on the cross-North Sea run to Denmark.  Ja, they do pick up the kronor.  But of course in the end we are all doomed.  It is a feeble entertainment." 

Of course, Finnish rascals wouldn't talk at all (moar silents!!) and Danish Rascals would sing even more (though no one could understand them).  Norwegian rascals would ALL be the rich kids

But it would be FUN. 

[mtw12055]

Well, there was Tommy Cook (no, not that Tommy Cook), who aspired to be a top chef. He succeeded in the latter of those two during the '70s when Jim Henson hired him for the cast of The Muppet Show. Even as a kid, little Tommy loved going around the neighborhood in a chef's hat and a false mustache.



But as revealed in the Jean Stapleton episode of The Muppet Show, Tommy wasn't actually Swedish.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iljHvsGWPkE

[malaria]

LOL.  Americans, myself included, generally love the Swedish Chef. The people who don't are, not to put too fine a point on it, Swedes.  Most Swedes contend that it is the Norwegians who speak in that peculiar and amusing sing-song tone, and in my (somewhat limited, but still) experience, the claim is valid.  The Icelandic comedian (!) Ari Eldjarn has a whole riff about it. 

But English is endemic in Sweden; hockey players come over from there speaking nearly unaccented and notably colloquial English.  Know one Germanic language, the others (save for Danish) come a bit easier.

Danish, meanwhile, is as much a throat disease as a language, though the people are good folks.

[mtw12055]

May 2, 2019 17:44:50 GMT -5 malaria said:

LOL.  Americans, myself included, generally love the Swedish Chef. The people who don't are, not to put too fine a point on it, Swedes.  Most Swedes contend that it is the Norwegians who speak in that peculiar and amusing sing-song tone, and in my (somewhat limited, but still) experience, the claim is valid.  The Icelandic comedian (!) Ari Eldjarn has a whole riff about it. 

But English is endemic in Sweden; hockey players come over from there speaking nearly unaccented and notably colloquial English.  Know one Germanic language, the others (save for Danish) come a bit easier.

Danish, meanwhile, is as much a throat disease as a language, though the people are good folks.

From what I understand, in the Swedish-dubbed Muppet Show, he's actually called The Danish Chef.

[malaria]

LOL... I would love to hear it. As, I'm sure, would many Danes, who take great joy in the fact that no Dane can apparently understand what another Dane is saying:





"...meaningless guttural sounds..."       Of course, the guy's English is perfect, mild accent at best.

[mtw12055]

One Google search later - I stand corrected. He's the Danish Chef in the German version. I'm not sure about the Swedish version.

Here's an appearance The Swedish Danish Chef made with Jim Henson on a German talk show. Henson lip synced live to the Chef's overseas voice actor.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSWjjAvLiCE



As for the question of Swedish Rascals, Leon Tyler played a Swedish guy who joins the Our Gang Army in HELPING HANDS, one of the MGM shorts.

[malaria]

Good on you... great find.

Comically, the German-speaker sounds far more guttural than the Danish chef, but these are both North Germanic languages, so the throw-up sound in the back of the throat is never absent for too long. Swiss-German speakers also have a lot of it. as do Yiddish-speakers; Gottschalk's German counting was right up Max Davidson's alley.    "I knowww... where you are... but I won't tell you!!! (maniacal laughter)"

But back to Sweden, do give a look to My Life As A Dog, if you haven't seen it already. Stunningly good film, though it's oddly devoid of chess games with Death, never mind that death is a recurrent backbeat throughout.   I don't know how such good-looking people manage to find such gloomy subject matter (and Ingmar Bergman was far worse in that regard), but darn, do they make good films. 

[myhomeo]

And if we're gonna talk about foreign films with Rascal-types, I believe CITY OF LOST CHILDREN's kids were probably inspired by or modeled on the Rascals...

[malaria]

Gotta track that down... what was Ron Perlman doing in a French film anyway? Was Depardieu otherwise engaged?