The White Reindeer (1952) October 16th, 2023

The White Reindeer sat on my shelf for years, patiently awaiting the October evening I would finally be ‘in the mood’ to watch a Finnish vampire movie. Eureka!’s synopsis calls The White Reindeer “A vampiric fairy-tale set amongst the starkly beautiful fells of Finnish Lapland…”. I foolishly took that literally but unless ‘vampire’ is Finnish for “a witch who makes a deal with a shaman to become a were-reindeer with fangs” this is a far cray from what I consider vampiric (my wife made garlic Mac and cheese with reindeer sausage and everything!).

The White Reindeer’s plot involves a reindeer shepherd and his wife who longs for her husband to be home from work more often. Restless and alone, she strikes a deal with a shaman for some magic that’ll make her ‘irresistible’ to any reindeer herder. She just needs to exchange a bottle of booze and slaughter the first animal she comes in contact with on her way home for her wish will come true. Unfortunately that creature would be the albino reindeer calf her husband gave to her as a gift.

Somewhere in the wind blown tundra, she slaughters the calf at the base of a spooky reindeer alter decorated in skulls and antlers. The next day her husband’s returned but like most of the men in her village, their blissful reunion is short lived. She’s begun falling into spells of transformation, wherein she becomes a reindeer and lures other reindeer herders to a valley they call something awful like ‘evil valley’ where she slaughters the besnowshoed Finns, one after another. Eventually the townsfolk have enough of this string of deaths and set out to slaughter the beast. When they finally kill the accused reindeer it transforms back into a woman to everyone’s mortification.

The White Reindeer is an impressive filmmaking accomplishment even if the story isn’t. I can only imagine how difficult shooting in the frigid Lapland cold must’ve been, or the complex rigs they must’ve constructed to achieve the ultra smooth shots in the reindeer chase sequences. How many 1950s ND filters do you need to diffuse the blinding Arctic snow? How heavy is all that gear and how did you keep it functioning in the elements? But judging by the end product you wouldn’t guess the filmmakers overcame any trying challenges whatsoever. Somehow, despite these imagined hurdles, they managed to conceive of and execute creative shots and sequences surpassing many Hollywood picture of the era.

Maybe it’s the novelty of seeing hundreds of reindeer running around in a black and white herd or the beautifully rare albino calf, but there’s certainly something magical captured in The White Reindeer‘s glimpses of Lapland life that elevates the experience beyond a run of the mill film. That slice of life element calls to mind arctic scenes from Robert J. Flaherty’s groundbreaking documentary Nanook of the North, ironically without its sense of staged cinema verité. The only objections I can imagine anyone having to The White Reindeer are the surface level complaints about reading subtitles, not being in color, and simply being an old movie. If you’re not afraid to try something unfamiliar and open yourself up to a new experience, give The White Reindeer a shot. Especially if it’s trying to kill you!