Rural Sweden (1938) User Reviews

Ay Tank Ay Go

[boblipton · 5/10 · 16 November 2019]

Mournful music accompanies the first half of this Traveltalk, and even the dance music played in the second half is a bit strange, since the lyrics consist of "La-la-la" repeated until the music stops, which it eventually does, thank goodness. I wonder what sort of royalties the lyricist collected.

Visually, this one is pretty much up to the standards of the Fitzpatrick series, with a lot of bright colors in native costumes to show off the Technicolor process, and the choice of shots pretty much a travel brochure for tourists. Aurally, this is also pretty much the standard Fitzpatrick blather, offering us the insights that the Vikings invented wrestling -- what that event doing at the Olympics a millennium and a half earlier? -- and that Visby was the capital of the Hanseatic League, at which I am sure everyone in the audience nodded their heads. Listening to Fitzpatrick announce his collection of random statements in an excited drone was a staple of this series.

If you catch this one when it plays on TCM, my recommendation is to turn off the sound. Just like with all of 'em.

White Race

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 16 November 2019]

This James A. FitzPatrick travelogue goes to the old Swedish town of Visby, located on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The town reached its heights in the middle ages but is now a smaller town of 11k. From there, the show travels to Gripshold Castle with dancing locals in colorful costumes. Outside of Stockholm is a community of ancient re-enactors. Vikings is a powerful branch of the white race and has given the world many of its outdoor sports. It's always fascinating to hear something from the past that doesn't have modern filters. Its lack of width in perspective is interesting. It shows how far we have come and how much things stay the same. It's a time and a place, and I'm not talking about the subject.

The Groaning Fat Cat One Per Center travel shill . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 2 April 2019]

. . . unveils his True Colors during RURAL SWEDEN, and they are a perfect match to the Prussian swastika war flags then beginning to wave all across a beleaguered Europe. At the time RURAL SWEDEN was showing in America's most well-heeled movie theaters, its releasing studio was serving as the 3rd Reich's U.S. Propaganda mouthpiece. Backed by Pachyderm Party fellow travelers populating the U.S. Congress, Fifth Columnists such as RURAL SWEDEN's narrator toed the Prussian Party Line right up to (and sometimes across) the border into the Realm of High Treason. "The Vikings are one of the most powerful Branches of the White Race," proclaims this Aryan Puppet near the close of RURAL SWEDEN. The "neutral" Swedes are the True Heirs of the Norsemen, he stipulates. With such pure-blood blondes in the ascendancy, "All seems to be Well with the World," he assures America's corrupt corporate Quisling class. Only a traitor assuming that the Germanic Pachyderms were a shoo-in to seize power in the 1940 U.S. Election cycle would confidently spout off in this sort of nefarious fashion. The perfidy involved with such a politicizing of "Travel Talks" in favor the Axis of Evil Powers is mind boggling, even Today!

TravelTalks

[Michael_Elliott · 14 May 2012]

Rural Sweden (1938)

** (out of 4)

Lesser entry in MGM's TravelTalks series has James A. FitzPatrick taking us to Sweden where in the end we learn very little. Our first stop is in Bisbee where we learn about it starting off as a Viking port and we learn about how a city was believe to have stood there 2,000 years before Christ. We learn that very few people actually live there but in current times it's used as a resort. From here we learn that the Swedish people love the outdoors and this includes various folk dances as well as them taking credit for stuff like wrestling, boxing, baseball and football as they say the Vikings helped create these sports. Yes, we learn a few items here but for the most part I found this to be a rather dull entry in the series as it really did seem that FitzPatrick was just rambling about uninteresting things and especially for the first five minutes or so. None of the stories were all that interesting and considering this was a Viking port it seems like they would have found something better to talk about.

As they're stirring the gumbo down in New Orleans . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 6/10 · 16 November 2019]

. . . the chefs are quick to warn their clients NEVER to trust anyone named "Jimbo." RURAL SWEDEN goes a long way toward explicating this Big Easy Truism. Some dude with at least the alias of "Jim" concludes RURAL SWEDEN with the bold-face claim that this infamous Quisling country invented such sports as the hammer throw, boxing, football and baseball. First of all, does "Abner Doubleday" sound like a Swedish moniker to you? Secondly, there's a "Touchdown Jesus" in South Bend, IN, and a near-exclusive Men of Color Fight Club making up the world's pugilistic champs list. But there's nothing religious about eating fish in Sweden, where a "Norseman" is the local definition of a "Minority Person." Finally, who cares if Sweden invented the hammer throw? Here in America, building contractors are hard-pressed to keep on schedule, WITHOUT taking any timeouts for carpenters' games. Obviously, in RURAL SWEDEN they have way too much time on their hands, as they spend most of their excess hours fabricating fibs and lies to hoodwink the "Jim's" of this globe.

If only it was longer

[jrm-63250 · 10/10 · 17 November 2019]

While short, it gives a simple overview of the heart of the Swedes. The friendliness of the Swedes is charming and the way they dance is wonderful. Prideful in their heritage from the Viking race, they make big claims when they say they invented multiple sports, just as someone's grandpa might say. I only wish this short film was longer.