Teuvo Tulio

Theodor Antonius Tugai (23 August 1912 – 8 June 2000), better known as Teuvo Tulio, was a Finnish film director and actor. Beginning his career as an actor at the end of the silent era, Tulio turned to directing and producing in the 1930s. His films are noted for their extremely melodramatic style.Village Voice: BAM Samples Finland's Teuvo Tulio
/ref>"How did Theodor Tugai turn into Teuvo Tulio?" at Embassy of Finland, Riga
/ref>The Auteurs: The Strange Loves of Teuvo Tulio
/ref>

Biography

Tulio was born as Theodor Antonius Tugai to a Turkish-Polish father named Aleksander Tugai and a Persian- Latvian mother named Helena Garschin in Rēzekne, in the Vitebsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Latvia). His mother was an 18-year-old aspiring ballerina when he was born. His parents' marriage was brief, and he spent the early part of his childhood in rural Latvia with his grandparents while his mother pursued a career as a ballerina in St. Petersburg. After his mother married a Finnish man named Alarik Rönnqvist, she sent for him to move to Helsinki in 1922, when he was ten years old.

The family settled in the Katajanokka neighborhood of Helsinki. The move was not easy, however, for a boy accustomed to rural life. Theodor spoke Latvian, Russian and German, but was unable to speak Finnish and Swedish, which were spoken in Helsinki. Other children taunted him for his appearance, due to his mixed-ethnic heritage, and he later recalled that was involved in many physical altercations.

In his teens, he befriended Valentin Vaala, three years older, after they met at an ice rink. Both were students at Helsinki's Russian-language Tabunov School and both were avid cinema goers who were fans of Charlie Chaplin and adventure films. At age fourteen, Tugai was the star of his Vaala's film ''Mustat silmät'' (Black Eyes), which was completed in 1929. Due to his "exotic" appearance, the young Tugai was sometimes referred to as Finland's answer to Rudolph Valentino.

In 1936 he changed his name to the more Finnish Teuvo Tulio. His first work as director was the 1936 film ''Taistelu Heikkilän talosta'' (Fight over the Heikkila Mansion), starring Regina Linnanheimo. Linnanheimo would become Tulio's lifelong companion, though the two were never married. She acted as the leading lady in many of his films and co-wrote the screenplays for six of his features, including his last film, 1973's ''Sensuela''. Linnanheimo wrote the screenplay to ''Rikollinen nainen'' (The Crooked Woman) and to ''Olet mennyt minun vereeni'' (You've Gone in My Blood).

Altogether, Tulio directed 15 feature films, three of which were lost film, destroyed in a fire in 1959. Parts of two of the films have been found in 2007 and in 2015.

Later influence and reputation

Tulio's films were an influence on the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, whose admiration brought the filmmaker international attention later in his life. In 2008 and 2009, short retrospectives of his work were held in the United States at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Pacific Film Archive. Covering the former for the ''Village Voice'', film critic J. Hoberman wrote: "At once arty and artless, stark and fulsome, Cine Tulio is ''characterized'' by an exaggerated emotional intensity and an equally primal lack of self-consciousness ... His movies are desperate and insistent, sometimes clumsy but never less than forceful. Tulio's strenuous lyricism allows the objective correlative to run wild."

In a brief essay on the filmmaker for the English-language film website The Auteurs, Anna Bak-Kvapil referred to Tulio's work as "spectacles of suffering and sex," writing: "His style can be Sergei Eisenstein, Eisensteinian, with expressionism, expressionistic Montage (filmmaking), montages of the shining faces of the proletariat intercut with kittens, crucifixes, or half-smoked cigarettes, but he adores Cinema of the United States, Hollywood, mimicking in his own over-enthusiastic way, George Cukor, Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch, Lubitsch and Josef von Sternberg, Von Sternberg."

Filmography

Director

* ' (''Fight over the Heikkila Mansion'', 1936), a part of a copy found in 2007
* ' (''Silja – Fallen Asleep When Young'', 1937), a part of a copy found in the archives of La Cinémathèque Franҫaise in 2015
* ' (''Temptation'', 1938), all copies destroyed in fire in 1959
* ''The Song of the Scarlet Flower (1938 film), The Song of the Scarlet Flower'' (''Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta'', 1938)
* ' (''Victor and Clara'', based on the comic strip "Bringing up Father", 1939)
* ''In the Fields of Dreams'' (''Unelma karjamajalla'', 1940)
* ' (''Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit'', 1944) and its Swedish-language version ''Sådan du ville ha mig'' (1944)
* ''Cross of Love'' (''Rakkauden risti'', 1946) and its Swedish-language version ''Kärlekens kors'' (1946)
* ''Restless Blood, Restless Bood'' (''Levoton veri'', 1946) and its Swedish-language version ''Oroligt blod'' (1946)
* ' (''In the Grip of Passion'', 1947) and its Swedish-language version ''Olof – forsfararen'' (1947)
* ' (''The Rapids of Hell'', 1949) and its Swedish-language version ''Forsfararna'' (1949); co-directed with Roland af Hällström
* ' (''The Crooked Woman'', 1952)
* ''Mustasukkaisuus'' (''Jealousy'', 1953) and its Swedish-language version ''Två kvinnor (1953 film), Två kvinnor'' (alternatively ''Kvinnorna på forsgården'', 1953)
* ' (''You've Gone into My Blood'', 1956)
* ' (''In the Beginning Was an Apple'', 1962)
* ''Sensuela'' (1973)

Actor

* ''Mustat silmät'' (1929) as Mustalaispäällikkö Eb-Anzio
* ''Mustalaishurmaaja'' (1929) as Manjardo
* ''Laveata tietä'' (1931) as Antti Larto alias Anton Lardozo
* ''Erämaan turvissa'' (1931) as Lappalainen
* ''Sininen varjo'' (1933) as Joel Orma, 'Sininen overall'
* ''Fredløs'' (1935) as Paavo (final film role)

References

External links

*
*
"How did Theodor Tugai turn into Teuvo Tulio?" at Embassy of Finland, Riga

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tulio, Teuvo
1912 births
2000 deaths
People from Rēzekne
People from Rezhitsky Uyezd
Finnish film directors
Finnish film editors
Finnish film producers
Finnish male film actors
Finnish people of Iranian descent
Finnish people of Latvian descent
Finnish people of Polish descent
Finnish people of Turkish descent
Finnish screenwriters
Latvian emigrants to Finland
Latvian film directors
Latvian film producers
Latvian male actors
Latvian people of Polish descent
Latvian screenwriters
20th-century screenwriters
20th-century Finnish male actors
20th-century Latvian male actors