In the Fields of Dreams

Innocent shepherdess Sirkka (played by Miss Europe of 1938 Sirkka Salonen), who sings to the animals-or perhaps they are all answering to the same off-screen musical call-is taken on as a servant on a prosperous farm. It's the end of innocence, but in a good way; shepherdesses have sexual desires, too, and young farm scion Aarne (Song of the Scarlet Flower's Kaarlo Oksanen) is inviting in every sense. “A strange way to treat a young, unbroken horse,” Aarne's mother observes of her two rival sons' barnyard behavior. Pregnancy and shunning of course ensue, in an over-the-top plot that requires the wildest religious symbolism to resolve. Replete with galloping horses and raging rivers (log-rolling footage reprised, we suspect, from Scarlet Flower), Field is the epiphany of Tulio's exuberant but studied use of nature cinematography, classical music, montage, and startling juxtaposition to effect an eroticism of the cinema.

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